My Star Spangled Invisi-Gal [MCU/Dispatch] (Complete)

cliffc999 · Dec 30, 2025

Author's Note:

And so we embark on my latest authorial exercise, the adventures of an isekai'ed Steve Rogers who gets accidentally dimensionally displaced from the time period in-between 'Thor 2' and 'The Winter Soldier' as he lands in the world of 'Dispatch' just about at the start of the game.

Time to make you all suffer through my shippy dramedy thing.

Pairings: Captain America/Invisigal, Robert/Blonde Blazer

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Minus 106

"Reactor chamber's sealed off and adjacent to the central bunker, here." Captain America pointed at the relevant part of the holographic diagram being projected over the map table in the rear of the Quinjet. "Main control station is here, and auxiliary control is here. Those are the only two places the reaction can be shut down from, so we've got to have at least one of them secured within sixty seconds of going loud. Everyone's already memorized the emergency shutdown sequence, so whoever reaches a panel first enters it first."

"Our approach routes suck, Cap." Agent Brock Rumlow drawled confidently from where he sat sprawled in the nearest chair. "We either have to get through that surface entryway's guard detachment whisper quiet and with zero callouts, and then it's several minutes through all these corridors to the central bunker with the risk that any random idiot we trip over going out for a bathroom break might sound an alarm. Either that or we use the tech-toy we brought to burn our way in straight from the roof… with all the risks that carries of dropping a giant cutting beam straight into the middle of a dark energy research lab we only have outline floor plans of."

"I know they hate telling us grunts about sources and methods, but if we got these plans and codes from an inside guy then the team will at least need a mugshot so we know who not to shoot." Agent Rollins said reasonably.

"Good thinking, but the Director assured me that our source is already clear." Captain America reassured him. "As for our entry decision, that's still a coin flip… and Natasha's still in the infirmary from the Bangladesh mission so we don't even have that stealth option available." He breathed out and nodded crisply, his voice firming with decision. "All right, it's the rooftop. Both options are risks that can't be calculated, so let's go with the one that makes the enemy have to catch up to us and not vice versa."

"Just to review, there's no plan C for us here?" Rollins nodded.

"None that I can figure." Rumlow answered. "Or the Cap, or Fury. Those idiots are going to kick off their wannabe Arc Reactor's first full-power test today, and according to Stark if we let them open up the throttle it's 99 to 1 it'll go unstable and then we've got an unscheduled nuclear incident in Southeast Asia to deal with. Add in that intel says this new AIM outfit's black lab here is actually deniable-fronting for the one of the last governments in the world anybody would want with arc reactor tech and, well, wait and see just ain't an option."

"Speaking of Stark-" Hendricks, the team's technical specialist, began.

"There's no way he could make it this far into contested airspace without them going to a higher alert status." the Captain said regretfully. "His ECM's good, but that suit's not a dedicated stealth aircraft."

"Still wish the heavy metal could be here, though." Rumlow agreed. "But, woulda coulda shoulda maybe. All right, STRIKE, lock in and load up. Time for drop."

"Altitude is ten thousand feet, wind is negligible, visibility is clear moonless night. Stealth mode nominal, no detection." The pilot called from the front. "Drop point in ninety seconds."

"Check parachutes, fore and aft." Captain America called out. "Stack up… door open… standby… stand byyyyy… jump!"

SHIELD's most elite special-operations squad leapt out into the moonless night and arrowed down towards the ground in precise formation, falling towards the expertly-camouflaged enemy complex in the jungle below. Rumlow and Rollins each dropped one of the two sentries patrolling the roof of the barely-visible bunker half-buried in the soil with a silenced headshot before they even touched the ground, then expertly flared out their chutes and came in to a standing landing. The rest of the squad touched down feather-light around them, Captain America grunting mildly with the effort of holding the several-hundred-pound repulsor-powered "tunneller" that Tony Stark had custom-built for this mission on his back.

The large metal cylinder of the Starktech 'tunneler' was rapidly whisked down and set up on its folding tripod, aimed down at the precise center of the precalculated point in the bunker roof. Tony Stark had custom-built it to cut a four-foot hole twenty feet straight down through the top of the bunker and into the main control chamber. The team carefully plotted their entry point on GPS to aim the beam where it would hopefully come down in-between two of the control stations and well away from any critical infrastructure, and then activated the timer. A slight whining built as the device charged up to full power.

"To review, first we put the concussion charge through the hole to shock the room and then follow it down single file in squad order." Cap stated briskly as the 'tunneler' continued charging. "I cover the breach, Rumlow goes for the nearest panel, Rollins as his wingman, everybody else deploys and reacts as needed to whatever we end up facing."

"Still think me and Jack should hold the LZ and you do the run, Cap." Rumlow said amiably. "You're a lot faster than either of us on the sprint."

"It's barely twenty feet, that's virtually no difference at our comparative speeds." Cap answered reasonably. "But whoever's first in has to sweep the entire room for potential threats to give the rest of you a chance to land, and who's got the fastest reaction time?"

"You're the boss." Rumlow nodded, as the whine of the capacitors charging reached its peak.

"Stack up." Cap ordered. "Breaching in three… two… one… now."

The 'tunneler' flared a brilliant blue circle as it's own one-shot miniature Arc Reactor cell destructively discharged all of its built-up charge in one burst, and the repulsor variant beam molecularly shattered the earth, steel, and concrete layered between it and the target. Barely one second later the burn-through completed and STRIKE's demo expert immediately armed the fire-extinguisher-sized giant 'flashbang' charge and dropped it into the hole, the eye-searing flash and devastating concussion almost being felt even on the surface. A fraction of an instant after that a climbing cord was unreeled from the tripod and Captain America smoothly leapt forward and caught it with his rappelling gloves, sliding down the rope with practiced ease just like it was a routine long-line drop from a helicopter with the rest of the STRIKE team hot on his heels.

The darkened room rang with the sound of the Mighty Shield arcing through the air and striking down the only two of the security guards still able to stand with a single two-corner bank shot before flying smoothly back into Cap's hands greeted Rumlow as he touched down, and him and Rollins ran smoothly forward in practiced unison towards the main reactor control station as the rest of STRIKE swept out to secure the room, dropping the just-arriving security reaction force with single aimed shots and making it look easy even despite the dim flickering of the emergency lighting.

Rumlow reached the panel and pulled away the slumped form of the scientist who'd fallen on it, ready to enter the carefully-practiced shutdown sequence-

-and glared incredulously down at the darkened keyboard and controls, which were entirely deactivated.

"Shit!" Rumlow swore. "Panel's dead! I can't input the code!"

"All these panels are dead!" Rollins swore from one of the adjacent stations. "Either the tunneler or the concussion charge must have fragged the room power!"

"What kind of walking lobotomies don't put critical reactor controls on the same emergency power bus as the backup lights?!?" Hendricks swore incredulously. "Hang on, let me try and find the breaker box and reset-"

The room flared brilliant blue through the viewing window leading down into the main reactor chamber as AIM's bootlegged, hotwired kludge of an Arc Reactor attempt suddenly ramped up from standby and began climbing to full. Everyone in the room stopped dead at the realization that they were now at ground zero of a nuclear detonation… with barely a minute left on the clock.

"Rumlow, get them out!" Captain America commanded as he took off sprinting. "I'm going for aux control!"

"Even you aren't that fast!" Rumlow swore as the super-soldier left the main control room at his maximum speed, practically knocking the door off its hinges as he frantically set out to run a full half-circle around the complex to reach the aux control station on the other side of the reactor gallery.

"Well, none of us can outrun a nuke!" Cap's voice sounded in all their headsets with amused sarcasm as STRIKE obeyed their orders and fell back out of the main control room and out into the exit corridors that would eventually take them to the surface.

The entire bunker started to shudder underneath their feet as the reactor began to destabilize. Rumlow's men continued to struggle their way through the concrete-lined corridors towards the illusionary safety of the surface as Captain America's heaving breath sounded urgently in their headsets. Even for his serum-augmented physique he was setting a punishing pace, desperately trying to race ahead of the blast-

"Made it!" Cap's voice sounded in their headsets. "Shutdown code-"

The entire world shook and went momentarily black, as every one of the fleeing STRIKE squad was sent sprawling by the shock wave. It felt like space itself was twisting around them, until the roller-coaster ride suddenly stopped and left everyone on their knees or flat on the ground, desperately trying to hold down their breakfasts.

"Did it blow?" Rollins asked dazedly. "Are we dead?"

"Michaels!" Rumlow called to their squad medic. "Check your counter! What kind of dose did we take?"

"Point… point two sieverts. Maybe twenty rads." Michaels answered breathlessly. "A little hot, but way below the threshold of actual radiation damage."

"Boss." Rollins said in awe. "Look." He pointed back the way he came… at the starlight streaming down from above, visible through the cut-off end of the corridor. Starting approximately fifteen feet behind them the entire complex had just vanished in a circular globe centered on the reactor core, leaving a neat hemispherical depression open to the sky.

"Jesus Christ." Hendricks said dully. "It didn't detonate, it collapsed into an unstable wormhole. Like the one that took out SHIELD's dark energy lab when Loki fucked with the Tesseract there."

"Cap's gone?" Michaels said, his jaw dropping in shock.

"He's random molecules, got to be." Hendricks nodded. "Or else he's been blown so far into the ass end of the universe that the Chitauri are next-door neighbors compared to wherever he is."

"Shit, some guys just cannot catch a break." Rumlow snorted. "Lost his whole world when he went in the ice, and then he just lost this one… assuming he ain't vaporized." He shrugged. "Well, who knows. But doesn't matter, really. Either way we come out ahead."

"Huh?" Rollins goggled.

"Think, you dumbass." Rumlow said tolerantly. "The only reason we hadn't already arranged an 'accident' for him ourselves was because Fury would have been up the entire incident's ass with an electron microscope, and so we'd be betting everything on the hope that we could fake a good enough crime scene to fool that one-eyed old bastard. And we just couldn't take that kind of risk, not with Insight kicking off in only several months. But now the Cap's gone and heroically sacrificed himself in the line of duty, in a one hundred percent genuine tragedy that has no traces sticking to our fingers." He broke out into a beaming smile. "So everybody start rehearsing your sad faces for the debriefing and the funeral, because Captain America is finally out of HYDRA's hair… forever."

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 3

"Frozen in ice since World War II? Fuckin' seriously?" the elderly black man narrowed his eyes at Steve suspiciously.

"From 1945 to 2011." Steve answered evenly as he sat across the desk from the man giving him his entrance interview. "One of my enhanced abilities is an augmented metabolism, it preserved me without cellular damage when I was immersed in freezing water after the plane crash."

"Which happened after you saved the whole East Coast from bein' blowed up by a fuckin' Nazi superplane carrying a doomsday weapon powered by some super-science doohickey that glowed blue and shat out infinite power that nobody ever figured out how it worked. And then 70 years later they thaw you out and first you fight off a whole alien invasion practically by yourself and then you go right back into some black ops shit for this SHIELD agency." Chase rolled his eyes. "Captain, you tell a tall tale better than anybody I've ever met and I work in a whole buildin' full of fuckin' liars, but you want to try and give me a little something to work with in this job interview?"

Steve sighed briefly. "What part of the whole tale did you find the least believable, Mr. Chase? The Nazi superplane, the alien invasion, or the energy source?"

"Oh that shit sounded perfectly normal." Chase waved his hand dismissively. "But the part where how your joinin' the Army just put you in a position to get your whole life fucked over harder than any man I've ever met, which really means somethin' considerin' some of the people I have met, and you still went back and re-enlisted the instant you got out of the ice?" Chase grumbled. "Do you have the slightest fuckin' self-preservation instinct at all?"

Steve actually chuckled at that one. "If you asked any of my prior commanding officers, the answer would be 'No'." He continued more seriously. "Although I honestly don't believe I'm particularly careless. I just…" Steve trailed off helplessly.

"By all accounts have the shittiest luck ever known to humankind." Chase agreed roughly. "All right, you don't smell like a crazy person or a liar to me, even if your backstory would get laughed out of Hollywood for bein' unbelievable as hell. And I saw the police report on the gear they confiscated when you landed in the middle of downtown, that kind of weapons and tech only comes from the damn CIA or worse. So… I'll sign off on believin' it. Well, the outline of it."

"Thank you." Steve said agreeably. "The government was a lot better than I expected about giving me a basic legal identity, but-"

"Everybody knows magic is real, we even got a demon sorceress workin' right in this branch office." Chase interrupted brusquely. "So other dimensions existin' is known fact, even if crossovers like yours ain't exactly common."

"But I still need a job." Steve agreed. "And while I could have applied for anything… I guess this time I didn't want to re-enlist right away after all. And at least your Superhero Dispatch Network would let me support myself while still using my enhanced abilities to help people, instead of something more… conventional." Steve continued more practically.

"Yeah, you already explained why you rejected the government offer, and who could fuckin' blame you, fuckin' spooks and all their shifty shit." Chase snorted. "Surprised you picked us rather than one of the other corpo teams though. We don't exactly offer the highest salary, and you're exactly the kind of camera-friendly person they love to pack their rosters with."

"Back when I first enlisted the Army had me doing War Bonds tours for months before I could finally get myself a real combat deployment." Steve said disapprovingly. "No. Thank. You. Your company was the only one that agreed to give me a guarantee of no show-pony or PR work, just actual hands-on heroing. Plus, you were one of the only offers that didn't insist I commit to a fixed contract but instead left me the option of resigning at my discretion."

"Still wish you'd agreed to help shoot the PSAs." Chase muttered. "Only other people we got available that have any hope of getting through them without a PR disaster are Phenomaman and Blazer, and he's kinda so-so on them and she's got so many dumped on her already it just makes a man want to weep."

"… maybe later." Steve sighed with pained sympathy. "If she really needs my help. But please… not right away?"

"All right, all right." Chase agreed tolerantly. "Just one more question before I take you down to start your evaluations and training." He raised an eyebrow. "You're Mr. Squeaky-Clean Polite from a bygone era where manners were so good that a gentleman wouldn't even go outside without a hat on, and you haven't even so much as fuckin' blinked at all my cussin' not once? Now I can hardly complain about somebody around here finally havin' some fuckin' self-control for once, but if you don't ever let people see the real you then that's not healthy. For either you or for them."

"Sir, I used to sleep in an army barracks full of World War II paratroopers." Steve raised an amused eyebrow. "Do you really think I haven't heard that kind of language before? Our typical manner of speaking back in the Howlers would have lowered the tone in a maximum-security prison. Our unit's linguist could speak five languages, but he had an encyclopedic knowledge of profanity in maybe fourteen of them." Steve shrugged. "As long as it's just your way of expressing yourself and not meant to hurt or belittle anyone, and your workplace tolerates it, it's not a problem."

* * * * *

"… I wasn't too hard on the equipment, was I?" Steve asked embarrassedly as he re-slung his shield on the back of his costume. "Sorry, I still sometimes have a problem with that if I don't remember to slow down."

"Dat's okay." Royd, the hulking tech specialist for SDN's Torrance branch office said. "Just a couple of dents, dey polish out of the combat robots easy."

"Well, Captain, your score on the combat test is…" The SDN functionary carefully adjusted his spectacles. "Uhhh… maximum."

"I tink it only be dat low because the metrics dey don't scale any higher." Royd chuckled.

"The evaluation analysis programming did… start providing rougher estimates towards the end." the trainer agreed dazedliy. "In any event, yes, he tests completely out of the hand-to-hand module, he doesn't even need to take the related training. Or the marksmanship module… the tactical situations module… the situational awareness module… the…" He looked at Chase incredulously. "You're sure he's being assigned to our branch office?"

"Rules are rules, and since we can't actually verify anything he put on his resume what with him bein' from another goddamn alternate timeline, that means the only way we can credit him with anything beyond 'did well on the entrance evaluations' is after he proves it in the field." Chase grumbled. "Which means since he officially has zero seniority and zero credit for anything then he gets assigned to an entry-level squad only, and there's only one of those in LA with a fuckin' opening right now. Even if it is a fuckin' waste and a half to send a prospect like this there."

"I started as a private, I can be one again, relatively speaking." Steve shrugged. "And I do have a lot of adjusting to do, so taking it slow for my beginning instead of jumping straight into a higher-level position is fine by me. Really fine."

"'Slow' is not the word I would use to describe what you're in for." Chase muttered darkly. "Still, ain't no way around it. All right, son, it's another day or so of the paperwork and the orientation to learn how our system works and all, and then you report on duty with the Z-Team in the Torrance branch office right here."

"An 'entry level' outfit, with apparently a high personnel turnover if it always has an opening, and that they've labelled the 'Z-Team'." Steve nodded knowingly. "Let me guess… it's what in the Army we'd have called the awkward squad?"

"Awkward squad." Chase laughed briefly. "Yeah, that's a damn good way to describe it. Still, ain't no fuckin' way around it so the only way is through." He nodded. "Should only be for a couple months anyway, you just have to not fuck it up in the field and soon enough we can rotate you out to one of the better teams. But that's for the future, right now it's about time to clock out." Chase waved off Steve's next question. "So let me take you to the cashier's office so you can pick up your pay advance and get enough to buy yourself some things and get somethin' to eat. Also, I called in a favor from a friend and already found you an apartment cheap. Get you out of that motel and into some place you can actually have a little furniture and shit. You can find your own flop next month if you hate it, but this month's on the house. We'll call it 'relocation assistance'."

"Thank you, sir." Steve said politely as they walked out. "You've been very helpful, all of you."

"You're welcome." Chase nodded. "Sorry I couldn't get you in to meet your branch manager yet, but Blazer's been run ragged these past couple of days with ten tons of everything up at corporate and also tryin' to get this, uh, other new project we're hopin' to spin up actually be signed off on. I'll let you know when she's got an opening so you two can get introduced. You'll like her, she's a sweetheart."

"Looking forward to it." Steve gave a polite smile.

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 4

Steve straightened his costume and after a quick glance at his reflection in a nearby window to make sure nothing was out of place, he shrugged and entered through the revolving door into the music-filled trendy bar. The superhero bar called 'Crypto Night' had been recommended to him as a place where he could begin to check out the costumed hero scene in this part of LA, and also to get a decent drink without having to change. So after having spent a couple of days completing his employee orientation, settling into his new (minimalist) apartment, and buying some clothes and other essentials with his pay advance, Steve had decided while at entirely loose ends to at least try going out to the local hero hangout and seeing who his new colleagues might be.

Standing and luxuriating briefly in the unique sensation of being out in a public place in his Captain America suit without anyone paying attention to him, Steve looked briefly around the room for any of the very people he'd met and could recognize and saw none of them. He shrugged and went up to the bar.

"So, you're the new guy? Captain America?" the bartender looked consideringly at the obviously flag-themed hero. "Here's hoping you're not as much trouble as the last guy who had that seat."

"What happened?" Steve asked politely.

"First off, he came in here without any powers and when he wasn't a hero any longer, when that's against the rules. Then he picks a barfight with like three people at once when they ask him to leave. And finally he dumps a full glass of Everclear on top of a man while his flame powers are already going, singed off all the guy's hair. Left a mess all over the floor, too. Just had to bounce him out a few minutes ago." The bartender shook his head inquiringly. "I have no idea what the hell Blonde Blazer of all people sees in that jerk."

"Oh, she was here?" Steve raised an eyebrow. "I was hoping to meet her."

"You and the entire male half of LA, buddy." The bartender nodded knowingly. "Hottest heroine on the scene. But she's already taken." He shrugged confusedly. "I mean, I thought she was seeing Phenomaman, actually, but she was flirting pretty hot and heavy with the new guy right now… anyway, the relevant point is that she left with him."

"Well, there's always tomorrow." Steve shrugged. "Coke, no ice."

"You came to a bar to drink soda?" The bartender raised an eyebrow. "For what I charge for one glass you could get a whole two-liter at the store."

"With my metabolism, alcohol barely tickles me." Steve shrugged. "And it's not much of a taste either, so why bother?"

"You're not the only one with powers like that." The bartender nodded knowingly. "I got some fortified stuff here, basically pure alcohol with flavor. Slug enough of it back and even someone as strong as Blazer starts feeling the buzz. You want some?"

"Not when I have to work early tomorrow. Coke and keep it coming, I'm just here to meet people." Steve said agreeably.

"Fair enough." The bartender said and handed Steve his drink.

"You said the gentleman before me had 'lost his powers'?" Steve asked after a sip. "How does that work?"

"Oh, right, they said you're from another dimension or something." the bartender remembered. "We had a power armor guy in town called Mecha Man, one of the independents. Was in the game for like fifteen years, didn't do a bad job… at first. But he'd been slipping more and more recently, and finally he gets himself absolutely trashed fighting this guy called Shroud and his whole villain team a few months ago. Armor was totalled, and he'd run out of money somehow so he couldn't fix it. So he gives a press conference saying he's quitting on being a hero." The bartender snorted. "You finally track down the guy who killed your father, and you completely blow the job when you get there? And you quit being a hero because you ran out of cash, and then you come here picking fights and looking for free sympathy? Can you believe that guy?"

"Oh, there was a lot in those last few sentences that I couldn't believe." Steve replied with icy formality. "Thanks for the drink." He pushed the half-full glass back across the bar, laid down just enough cash to pay for it – and no tip – and pushed himself away and headed out the door.

Steve stopped outside the front of Crypto Night and looked up at the brilliant moon in the sky, breathing in the warm California air. It's really a beautiful night, he thought slowly to himself. And this world's mostly at peace, not like the international tensions we were constantly juggling at SHIELD. And yet-

Steve exhaled meaningfully as he began the long walk back to his new apartment. He'd hoped to start getting settled into this new 'community' of heroes he'd joined, but so far the only people he'd heard of who even sounded heroic all seemed either caught up in some corporate maze or else entirely ostracized by the other 'heroes'-

And yet I'm just going to have to adjust. he pondered. Both the scientific and magic experts that SDN consulted about me said they'd keep looking into options, but with the easy solutions already all foreclosed they weren't holding out much hope. Maybe Nick will have some kind of solution for finding me that he kept 'compartmentalized' until he needed it, or maybe Tony will come up with something- heck, Thor was supposed to have a friend who could scan distant dimensions, wasn't he? But-

Steve squared his shoulders with resolution.

But I've already done everything I can do about that. he thought to himself. If a rescue mission comes for me, then it comes. But I can't go all-in on just waiting it to come, and leaving myself with no options if it doesn't. I've got to at least try to actually live here, and not just exist. Natasha already kept telling me that I wasn't doing enough of that, the last thing I need to do is double down.

And I already lost my whole world once, and it felt like I barely had my chance to put my feet down in my new one before I lost it again. Who knows, maybe third time will be the charm.

He exhaled heavily and kept wearily walking. And even if it's not, you have to report for your new assignment tomorrow so just keep putting one foot in front of the other, soldier.

Just take it one day at a time.

cliffc999 · Dec 30, 2025

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 5

Captain America sat stiffly on his chair at the end of the conference room table nearest the door, rigidly masking his… concern… over the gathering he was now a part of.

Chase warned me the rest of the Z-Team were ex-supervillains who were trying to overcome their criminal pasts via public service, but I'd been expecting people a little more like Natasha and a lot less… this.

His eyes flickered from the arrogant and bullying living flamethrower Flambae to the coldly disturbing winged ex-assassin Coupe to the erratic and twitching (and more than a bit frightening in appearance) man-bat-monster Sonar to… well, there really wasn't anyone here who seemed repentant. The attitudes in the room ranged from insolent arrogance to outright apathy to a couple of people who seemed on the verge of a neurotic episode of some kind. Perhaps the only reasonably cheerful and relaxed people in the room were the diminutive strongman Punch Up and the 'demon sorceress' Malevola, who despite her warm and perfectly reasonable demeanor was someone that Steve willingly admitted to himself he'd deliberately picked a seat on the opposite end of the table from because, well, demon. And he still wasn't sure exactly what that meant here, but once you'd fought alongside the son of Odin you kept in mind that that just sometimes, an alleged mythological being might actually be as mythical as they claimed to be.

And then there was Golem, who was some type of mud robot or construct, and… well, JARVIS had been a perfectly reasonable artificial intelligence who Steve was fine with, but that's because Steve had gotten to know him and also knew and trusted the man who'd programmed him. Hopefully Golem would become at least one of those things later on, but for now…?

"Someone's cutting again." Flambae drawled nastily. "Maybe we should tell teacher."

"Fuck you." a strange young woman's voice startled Steve slightly, as the young woman herself flickered into visibility on a nearby chair. "That's like the twentieth time you didn't put together 'empty chair in the room still has a divot in the cushion' with 'hey, one of my teammates is called Invisigal." the lithe short-haired brunette woman rolled her eyes. "Because she, y'know, turns invisible?" she drawled sarcastically.

"Girl, he waited almost twice as long as last time!" the brilliantly-dressed woman who'd been introduced to him as 'Prism' rolled her eyes. "How the fuck did you hold your breath that long? Your little bitch lungs are weaker than Waterboy's pick-up lines!"

Invisigal snorted derisively and answered Prism's sally with an upraised middle finger, not even bothering to look at her.

"Hey, team." a calm, slightly tired-sounding male voice sounded in everyone's headset. "This is your dispatcher, Robert Robertson. I'm starting my first shift-"

Every single person in the room save one burst out in laughter.

"Tell me that's not your real na-" Prism began to gasp out.

"GOOD morning, sir." the Captain 'politely' greeted their new supervisor back, even if the first word had been almost bellowed at the top of his lungs to startle the room into silence. "May I ask what's our first assignment?"

"It's a subscriber assistance call." Robert replied quickly but firmly, as he rapidly seized the life-line that Steve had just tossed him. "Non-combat, but requiring some decent mobility. Should only need one hero…" Their dispatcher paused for a moment before deciding. "Captain, this one's yours. Coordinates and precis are in your commlink, tap my individual channel if you need more details. Everybody else stay on team chat, we have some more things to cover."

"On my way." Cap acknowledged, and with a polite if stiff nod to everybody else he left the room.

"… who the hell was that?" Invisigal looked at the others confusedly, to a chorus of shrugs.

* * * * *

"A child lost their balloon in a tree? Really?" Steve sighed into his headset as he drove back from his 'subscriber assistance call'.

"Tell me about it." Robert agreed wearily. "Obviously the non-emergency calls are pushed right off the bottom of the assignment board the instant any of the 911 calls comes in, but apparently this bread-and-butter work is the sort of thing the paid subscribers are paying for. Look, it's my first day here too, and I agree this is not what either of us probably picture when we think of 'superheroing'."

"Well, I asked for something simple to start with, I suppose I can't complain that I got my wish." Steve manfully tried to make the best of it.

"Still, thanks for the bail-out this morning." Robert agreed. "I shouldn't have needed it, but I'm glad you gave it."

"Why didn't they introduce you to us in person?" Steve wondered. "Obviously this isn't the Army, but people still only respond to leadership if they actually see their leader as more than a faceless, distant voice lurking in an office."

"That's what I said, but I don't write their procedures manual." Robert agreed. "Anyway, at least we're getting one assignment done this shift without a client complaint… which is apparently one more than average, as depressing as that sounds. I'll try and give you something more heroic next time, assuming we get any calls for it."

"Boring is fine." Steve reassured his harried-sounding new supervisor. "We loved boring in the Army, it meant nobody was shooting at us."

"I can only imag- and, there's a bar fight at Crypto Night. Captain-" Robert.

"I didn't make myself very popular at Crypto Night last night." Steve admitted embarrassedly. "Might be better to send someone else."

"Seems to be a lot of that going around." Robert agreed amusedly. "Okay, I'll send Punch Up. At least he knows a lot about barfights." A sudden beeping sound echoed in Cap's ears as Robert's headset mike picked it up at his end. "And, 911! Museum robbery in progress, and you're closest."

"Acknowledged, ETA four minutes." Steve acknowledged crisply as he gunned the motorcycle he'd requisitioned from SDN's motor pool and started rapidly weaving through traffic.

The museum robbery was slightly difficult in that the malfunctioning security system was targeting the Captain as well as the robbers, but evading the simple motion sensors that the security system used was a relatively pedestrian task compared to the advanced defensive networks that some SHIELD missions had required him to infiltrate past. Steve was mildly surprised that the robbers were packing energy weapons instead of mundane firearms, but his shield easily dealt with the one or two blasts that he couldn't evade and the thieves were subdued with dispatch.

"Right, now comes the follow-up." Robert said. "The cops ran a 'known associates' and cross-trace on one of the guys you caught and turned up a lead, so we know where the art theft ring's hideout is. And there's already an outstanding mission request to recover some stolen artwork that this particular gang had taken earlier. Thing is, these paintings are valuable so going in fast and hard risks not only blowing the assignment but getting us sued for millions of dollars. How are you at stealth missions?"

"The recovery of the stolen property is the first priority? Not apprehending the thieves?" Steve asked disapprovingly.

"It's both, actually, but the one is slightly ahead of the other. Still, as you are correct this is technically two taskings, I can assign a two-hero team to it... got it. I'm routing Invisigal to your location."

"Makes sense, she's the stealth expert." Cap agreed.

"Exactly. Good luck, Cap." Robert signed off.

Invisigal's own motorcycle soon pulled up alongside where Steve's was parked discreetly behind a building a block away from the art thieves' hideout. "Hey, nice taste in wheels for an old guy." she drawled sarcastically. "Everybody else without movement powers just checks out a boring sedan or something."

"I've always liked motorcycles." Cap replied cheerfully. "Good gas mileage, lets you get through tight traffic-" He noted the growing look of boredom on her face as he made polite conversation, and decided to yield to a temptation he didn't even fully understand. "-and if you're ever really stuck for a ranged attack option you can throw one a lot easier than you can throw a car." he finished with a perfectly straight face.

Invisigal snorted amusedly, for just a moment shocked out of her usual breezy insolence, before she recovered. "So, sneak in and steal the stolen paintings back? Is this just a ploy for you to sit and chill while I do all the work?"

"It's make sure the paintings are out safe, then apprehend the thieves." Cap nodded briskly. "I know what your powers are, but I'm not familiar with your skill set?"

"I stole shit for a living, flag-man." Invisigal smirked confidently. "You name it, I've snuck up on it… and then went home with its wallet, smartphone, and underpants. What's your experience?"

"US Army special operations, then… intelligence agency support." Cap did his best to describe SHIELD succinctly.

"Huh." She raised an eyebrow.

"Hold up." He cut her off as she sprang off the motorcycle seat, visibly ready to just charge in there. "You're the expert at the stealth phase so the entry plan is yours, but I'd like to know where the bad guys are and what the terrain is like before we actually kick off."

"Look, what I do is more of a 'wing it' type business than a 'synchronize our watches' type business." Invisigal stated. "So just let me do my thing and you do yours, and-"

"I have no idea where you are because I can't see you when you're invisible and we didn't tell each other what our plan was, and then I accidentally hit you while taking a shot at someone else." Steve interrupted firmly. "It's called friendly fire, and it's the least friendly thing you can do on a team."

"… fine, we do it the boring way." she sighed. "I'm gonna use that rooftop over there for a vantage point to scope out the sitch, try to keep up." She blinked out of visibility before Steve could reply, and he rolled his eyes briefly and then did a running parkour leap to kick directly off the alley wall and rebound right onto the opposing roof. A brief dash at what for him was a medium pace and which for most people would have been a desperate breakneck run put him at the vantage point, and Invisigal lost their impromptu race by three lengths as she flickered into visibility again behind him.

"… and they said white men couldn't jump." she tried to pass off nonchalantly, as they both knelt down and peered at the building across the street each through a pair of mini-binocs. "Eugh, could we get any more 'generic seedy warehouse'? That's the kind of place where you can draw the floor plan with a single rectangle."

"Which actually makes it harder, as there's no single obvious best place to stash the paintings." Cap grumbled. "You're going to have to search the entire warehouse."

"And I can only stay invisible for as long as I hold my breath." She groused. "And from what I can see through that open loading dock door, the shit they've got scattered all over in there isn't piled high enough to let me hide behind it. So I can't search the whole place because I've got nowhere to catch my breath… crap, so much for an easy win." she swore, before angrily turning towards Cap. "Hey, why are you smiling?"

"Because I just thought of a way to get the thieves to tell us where the paintings are, and to bring them conveniently outside for us… but we're going to need to improvise a little." Cap turned to face her. "Come on, we need to find a hardware store."

"And then?" Invisigal asked curiously, by now completely lost as to where Captain America was going with this.

"And then…" he grinned down at her.

* * * * *

"Oh my God that was the funniest shit ever!" Visi laughed until she coughed slightly, almost doubled entirely over as she leaned on her motorbike. "When that smoke bomb I snuck in there went off and then I dipped out and pulled the fire alarm on 'em, they couldn't throw the paintings into their van and peel out fast enough!"

"At which point they drove over the improvised tire strip I'd laid right outside the garage door they were parked inside of." Steve smiled. "Voila, one vanload of sitting ducks, and all it took was a few simple household chemicals, a two-by-four, and a box of long nails."

"Didn't even risk the paintings, because they had to get out of their van to even see us to fight." Visi grinned. "Damn, and here I thought you were going to be all yes-sir-no-sir stick up your ass to work with, but we just aced an assignment and had fun doing it!" She exhaled satisfiedly. "What kind of military manual even gives you ideas like that? I thought they were just boring shit."

"I got it from Sherlock Holmes, actually." Cap smiled back at her.

"'A Scandal In Bohemia', the only story in the Doyle originals with Irene Adler." Courtney acknowledged.

"So what you're saying is, you understood that reference?" Cap joked back, and then their headsets interrupted.

"Jeez, guys, it's an assignment, not a date." Robert's voice cut in amusedly on their headsets. "And next time remember to turn your mikes off before having a moment. That having been said, aces job the both of you. Unfortunately the afternoon rush just started rushing harder, so I need you two to split up again and handle the next pair of calls-"

"Yeah, yeah." Visi groused as she boarded her motorcycle again. "See you around, soldier boy." she said insouciantly.

"You too, ma'am." Cap nodded, grinning.

"Ma'am?" Visi muttered incredulously to herself as she drove off, and Cap did likewise.

After the initial flurry of activity was dealt with the remainder of the shift was largely hurry-up-and-wait, with no more major calls for him. Cap was more than a bit disturbed by several overheard bits of message traffic on the teamchat that revealed that his fellow 'teammates' were having what could be charitably described as mixed success, and that Flambae had apparently been almost-caught committing arson rather than combating it.

Soon enough Cap was sitting in a fast-food restaurant taking his late afternoon break, enjoying an extra-large cheeseburger and fries and pondering over his first day as it drew to a close. The work so far was the exact opposite of challenging, at least for him, but it had been strangely peaceful in its own way. The neighborhoods were clean, the people generally friendly, and even the cheesiest of the 'subscriber assistance' calls still had smiling children or grateful civilians, even if it felt more than a bit USO-like with how some of the calls just seemed like excuses to actually let regular people glimpse a 'superhero'.

He allowed his annoyed thoughts to drift away into a more pleasant recollection of the art theft case and it's amusing ending, as well as the feisty young lady he'd shared that amusement with-

The urgent beeping of his communicator startled Cap out of his reverie, as that particular tone meant 'Emergency Call'. "Captain America here."

"Cap, Invisigal went out on a donut store robbery and now it's turned into a major gunfight, complete with supervillain!" Robert said urgently. "I'm trying to mission-control her through it, but it's- Visi, DUCK!" The feed cut out for a moment before returning. "What's your ETA?"

Cap's SDN-issue motorcycle was already blasting through traffic at over 60 miles per hour with the emergency siren blaring. "Five minutes! What's her condition?"

"Just get there as fast as you can! Bad guy's ID is 'Lightningstruck', details should be in your feed! I'm switching to Visi's channel now!" Robert replied hurriedly and then the headset went dead.

Three minutes and forty-five seconds later Captain America's motorcycle screeched to a halt outside, and his mouth went dry as he saw the ambulance pulling up almost at the same time he did. If Robert had also summoned EMS, then-

"Shit!" Cap breathed out relievedly as he heard Visi swearing up a storm in the donut shop, "Fucking inbred brain-dead mother fucker!" she vehemently stomped out of the store, looking like she'd just been dragged backwards through a barfight and with blood spattered all over her jacket and clothes. "They're in here!" she called out to the arriving paramedics, and then finally caught sight of Cap standing there as she stepped aside to allow them in the store.

"I really hope that's for the bad guy." Cap greeted her as the stretcher was wheeled in. "Are you all right?"

"It's for the shop owner." Visi fumed. "Stupid asshole tried to frag us both with the bad guy's dropped blaster cannon and only blew himself up with it-" She angrily kicked the door frame. "I fucking had the asshole, and then the civvie tries to shoot me!" She stopped and caught her breath, then continued. "I'm fine, this is the other guy's blood."

"Friendly fire." Cap commiserated with her. "Like I said, it's just the worst."

"Well, there was also that part where you didn't spot the bad guy laying in ambush, got yourself tagged when you closed in, ignored my orders about-" Robert's voice sounded in their headsets.

"Shut up!" Visi screamed into her microphone. "Can I at least get back to base and wash dipshit's bloody nose off of me before you all get up my ass? And hey, if you were going to send Cap to back me up you couldn't have sent him a little earlier?"

"Well, I-" Robert broke off frustratedly. "It's just about end of shift, I'm closing down my board. No more calls today. Visi, get back to base and we'll discuss what happened before you go home. Cap, you can clock out along with the rest."

"Shit." Visi slumped as she turned off her mike. "I was actually not fucking it up for once, I finally got one little win, but as soon as I have to fly solo again it's right back to-" Her voice turned low and soft. "You can go home, Cap. Thanks for trying, but I'll just… see you next shift, I suppose."

"If it's okay with you, I'd like it if you walked me through what happened first." Cap said as he escorted Visi out to where their bikes were parked. "I've been through more than one awkward debriefing myself, and it sometimes helps if you phrase things in the language they understand."

"Captain Perfect? Getting ass-chewed?" Visi raised an eyebrow. "Pull the other one, it's got bells on. There's no way you disobeyed orders ever, not you."

"You honestly would not believe me if I told you." Cap replied with complete sincerity. "But for right now…?" he continued gently.

"Fine." Visi pouted. "I rolled up on the donut shop and looked inside, and-" The next several minutes had Cap fighting not to show his shock several times, as Visi described what had to be one of the most elaborate comedies of errors he'd ever seen packed into barely five short minutes… and he'd been on a team with Tony Stark. "And that's how it all went to shit." She snorted. "You'd probably have breezed through this one in a minute flat with one arm tied behind your back."

Cap paused and thought intensely, trying to find a way to phrase as diplomatically as possible to his prideful and upset teammate that yes, she had seriously dropped the ball here and he really would have breezed through the situation she'd just described… before a thought occurred to him.

"I tested out of the combat and tactical training when I took my entrance evaluation, so I don't actually know what's in their training manuals." Cap realized. "Did they include a section about room-clearing or- okay, in plain English, did they actually emphasize that even the most apparently peaceful trouble call shouldn't be called 'all clear' until you've checked all adjacent spaces for intruders?"

"I… don't actually remember anything like that." Visi nodded. "Which probably doesn't mean anything because I wasn't the greatest study, but- no." She chewed her lip thoughtfully as a thought occurred to her. "And the training is scheduled by dispatchers, and Z-Team hasn't kept a dispatcher for longer than two days since we were formed. Probably why Blazer went as far as hiring special hardass Robert for us, because I know he was a special hire- shit, I wasn't supposed to talk about that." she hurriedly blurted. "Forget I said anything. Anyway, yeah, our training schedule is almost certainly messed up all to shit given how nobody's stayed here along enough to even make one, so even if we were supposed to get taught how to do that stuff we probably weren't."

"Okay then." Cap said reassuringly. "So yes, the first big crux point where it all started going wrong was when you relaxed and started picking out donuts instead of checking the back room because you assumed unconscious store owner and missing money meant the bad guy had already left. But-" he raised his hand to pre-empt Visi's angry flare. "That's why I asked about your training, because you can't be fairly faulted for not following procedure you were never told about. So that one's a wash, and… honestly, outside of that one it sounds like you didn't do anything else wrong."

"Sure I didn't." Visi spat angrily. "That's why I'm sitting here covered in shame, bruises, and Thundercuck's fucking nosebleed and boogers. Because I got it all right."

"I didn't say a whole lot didn't go wrong." Cap agreed. "But from what you described it wasn't you, it was bad luck and having to start out already on the back foot. Him bleeding all over you in particular was a killer, because it meant you lost your greatest advantage against him – your invisibility."

"Yeah, if I get shit splashed on me while I'm already invisible for some reason it doesn't fade out with me like my clothes do, even if I go visible and fade out again." Visi nodded. "But then there's the whole Robert told me to disarm the one guy first, and I went for the other. He's gonna blame the whole thing on that."

"And if he did, that would be 'squad leader in the sky' syndrome." Cap said disapprovingly. "So I really hope he doesn't."

"Squad up in the what where how now?" Visi asked.

"It means trying to micromanage troop movements from the safety of headquarters while you're mission-controlling them through the view from a drone or a recon plane or suchlike, instead of letting the commander on the ground make those decisions." Cap said. "Overwatch is highly useful, just of course, like the benefit we get from Robert looking through the security cameras and calling out targets and movements to us is. But in the Army at least, overwatch like that is suppose to be there to give you more information, not to remotely micromanage. The senior man on the spot – which in your case was you, as you were the only one on the spot – has to make the split-second decisions in the middle of a firefight, nobody else. Grand strategy or overall guidance from HQ is something else, but this wasn't that."

"Pretty sure SDN policy doesn't agree with how the Army looks at it." Visi said ruefully. "So I'm automatically wrong."

Cap nodded heavily. "No, it probably doesn't agree. And I'm not even saying that your decision was necessarily right and Robert's was wrong. Because I can't know that for certain, I wasn't there to see. But I am saying that I personally think that it should have been your decision to make, and not his. Because-" Cap stopped and reframed his thoughts. "Now that I think about it, what happened to you has some similarities to the last mission I was on before being dimensionally displaced here. You know, the one where the mad scientist's lab blowing up with me in it is why I got sent here-"

"Hold up, dimensionally displaced?" Visi looked at him oddly.

"That hasn't gotten around the office yet?" Cap shrugged. "In brief; alternate timeline, dimensional castaway, Army experience was all on the other side of the wormhole. Moving on, that mission started out with me having to make a coin flip about which one of two approach routes we'd use. Either route had a chance of working, but either one could also have ended disastrously, and there wasn't remotely enough information to calculate which one was better odds. And we had to make a decision right then and there." Cap snorted derisively. "And then something else entirely went wrong after we were already stuck in, through circumstances entirely beyond our control, and that led directly to disaster. So I can relate."

"Yeah, that sounds way fuckin' worse than just one shop owner needing an ER visit." Visi agreed. "Even if it used the same shit flowchart."

Cap slumped down, his voice lowering. "I don't even know if the rest of my squad made it outside the blast radius before it all blew. I do know that if they didn't then they're dead now. Nobody without my enhanced physique could possibly have survived the wormhole's tidal stresses."

"Damn." Visi looked at Cap, her face shocked. "That really sucks. Were they good guys?"

"I'd only been put in charge of the unit a couple months before that mission, so I hadn't really had a chance to get to know them deeply. Not outside of work. But they were all very good soldiers – brave, dedicated, tough. It was a good team, and I really hope they made it out."

"Must've been nice, having a team like that." Visi mused gently, before her communicator beeped urgently.

"Shit, I'm late." Visi muttered, standing up. "Well, time to go in and see how deep the shit I'm in is this time."

"I'll be waiting outside." Cap got up to follow her. "You can tell me how it went, and I'd just be wondering all night anyway if you waited until tomorrow to tell me."

* * * * *

"Didn't go well?" Captain America asked mildly as he stared down at the nondescript wiry brown-haired man who he was almost entirely certain was the Z-Team's dispatcher. The man in question was currently laying flat on his back on the break room floor, cradling his bloody nose.

"I ran into a door." Robert replied wearily – Cap easily recognizing his voice from all the radio calls earlier today – as Cap reached down to help him up.

"Looked like a particularly angry door." Cap replied evenly. "Is the door going to be reported to maintenance?" he continued in an entirely calm, flat voice.

"No." Robert shook his head as he wiped away the blood and stuffed some Kleenex up his nostrils. "She was entirely out of line… but by the end, so was I. I was the one in a more responsible position, I should never have lost my temper even if she'd already lost hers. So if I had her busted for punching me after what we were both throwing at each other, then I'd just be a chickenshit."

"I'm glad to hear that." Cap said much more warmly. "I'd better go and try to calm her down, assuming she's still on-campus."

"If she doesn't want to be found, you won't be finding her." Robert shook his head. "And you really don't have an opinion on what happened that you want to share with me? Because you clearly did with her. I very much doubt that 'squad leader in the sky' is a phrase Visi organically picked up from her own prior experiences."

"No." Cap shook his head. "I agreed to work here, so I agreed to submit myself to the chain of command. And the last thing anyone in a command position wants is some strange officer coming in and undermining their authority in front of their troops. Or backseat driving them with appeals to irrelevant authority."

"I was asking for your advice, Captain." Robert cradled his head in his hands. "Blazer brought me in because what they were doing before wasn't working, but as I was just vividly informed things aren't all going sunshine and puppies with me in charge either."

"From what I've picked up, the Z-Team's usual shifts have gone much worse than the one you just coordinated for us." Cap said. "So you're already making progress, and Rome wasn't built in a day… especially not with these building blocks. Are there things I'd be doing differently if we each had the other's job? Of course, but there's no guarantee I'd be doing better."

"Please, Captain. You were like, a super Delta Force guy." Robert said. "And I just- well, what I used to do was not quite what you used to do, let's put it that way."

"Exactly. I was a military special operations commander." Cap agreed. "Which means that all of my leadership experience was with troops who were already hand-picked for exceptional intelligence, aptitude, self-discipline, and motivation. Does that sound like the same situation you're facing?"

"Hah!" Robert laughed briefly. "No, not even remotely."

"So I'm not even sure my prior experience would apply usefully here. I'm not even sure if the rest of the team even wants to try and improve themselves." Cap agreed. "Granted, I only met them for a few minutes and we really didn't talk. But they all seemed… very unmotivated."

"Umotivated. That's definitely a word for it. But you did seem to hit it off pretty good with Invisigal, though." he pondered. "Which makes you the very first person around here who has. She's consistently been the absolute bottom of the performance chart since the day she joined… which is weird, because she's the only one who volunteered to be here."

"I thought I was the only one on the Z-Team who wasn't…" Cap trailed off diplomatically.

"A supervillain trying to stay out of jail?" Robert nodded. "Yeah. But all the rest of them are convicted supervillains – they got caught, they got busted, they took the Phoenix Program's plea deal to trade public service in return for not staying in the graybar hotel. Visi, on the other hand, might be a 'person of interest' in a whoooole lot of criminal cases but they never actually caught her. A few months ago she just came in and applied for Phoenix entirely on her own. Her only condition was that she not be required to, uh, testify about any specific events in her past."

"Well, that one's called the Fifth Amendment." Cap said agreeably. "So we can't fault her for insisting on it. But you're right. If she's the one ex-villain who actually wants to be here, then why is her performance the lowest?"

"Really wish I knew." Robert sighed. "Ugh, I've got a meeting with Blazer and Chase in like five minutes. If you've got any input you think would help, feel free to come with. It's about time you met Blazer anyway."

"One thing comes to mind; you need to review the training the team was supposed to get and compare it to the training they actually have gotten." Cap remembered. "Because given how chaotic the prior dispatcher situation was and how dispatchers are responsible for the training schedules, it's overwhelmingly likely that they're missing a lot. They can't be expected to do their jobs right if they've never been taught how."

"See, that's exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for." Robert nodded. "Got anything else?"

"I might or might not try to drop something in the suggestion box later, but not after only one day." Cap finally decided. "Until I learned more about what we're really working with here, I'd only be talking in ignorance."

"Well that's where I'm at right now, but I've still got to take this meeting." Robert stood up and stretched. "Thanks for the talk, though, Cap. Helped clear my head a little."

"Any time." Cap nodded to him as he stepped out.

"You really mean all that bullshit you just spouted off about not wanting to tell anyone else how to do their job?" Visi's voice startled Cap slightly as she faded into visibility sitting on the break room counter.

"If I say it, I mean it." Cap replied equably, standing up and heading over to the counter. "You want some coffee?" he asked as he decanted himself a cup from the machine.

"Nah, it gives me the jitters." Visi held up one palm as if to ward off evil spirits. "Thanks for talking him out of narcing on me, though."

"That was a decision he'd already made on his own." Cap protested. "He's not actually out to get you, differences of opinion aside."

"Makes him a rarity, then." Visi muttered. "So, you're really not a secret corporate trainer brought in as a ringer or something? Everybody on the team who actually had an opinion thought you had to be."

"I haven't even met the team yet. Morning roll call doesn't count, I couldn't get out of there fast enough." Cap replied.

"You think there's maybe a reason why I stay invisible through as much of it as I can?" Visi said sardonically. "You not included, this whole outfit's nothing but a bunch of stupid assholes."

"Visi." Cap said commiseratingly. "You know I don't include you in that category either."

"So you do think that about the rest?" she immediately shot back.

"I shouldn't talk badly about people behind their backs…" Cap sighed. "And for most of them I still won't."

"Oh, I've gotta hear this." Visi leaned in interestedly, her crooked grin turning positively vulpine. "Who's on the star spangled shit list?"

"Flambae is a bully, and I'll say that to his face the next time he tries to get in anyone else's. I don't like bullies, no matter where they're from or what their powers are." Cap replied firmly.

"Yeah, well if you ever throw down with him then watch out for his powers that aren't obvious. It's not just being a walking blowtorch, he's almost as strong as you and he can fly too." Visi replied immediately.

"Good to know." Cap replied. "Although I really shouldn't be getting in any fights with anyone here."

"Pity." Visi muttered.

"It occurs to me that we also talked about you behind your back, or at least we thought we were doing that." Cap said. "So if anything I said offended you, then I apologize."

"Apologize for what?" Visi stared at him incredulously. "You're like the first person here that hasn't blamed me for every unsolved crime in the calendar."

"Do you want to talk about why you don't seem to have much luck getting off the bottom of the leaderboard?" Cap asked after a thoughtful pause.

"Fuck no." Visi glared at him furiously. "And fuck you, I was starting to think maybe you were cool but nope, same old lectures as all the rest-"

"Visi, I was offering to help." Cap said entreatingly. "Or more accurately, I was asking if you wanted any help."

"Oh." she replied with dull surprise. "Well… no." She crossed her arms and glared at him suspiciously.

"All right." Cap nodded at her and stood up, slinging his shield. "Well, it's getting late and I won't keep you-"

"You're really not a secret trainer guy?" Visi asked plaintively, bringing Cap to a halt. "Because what you just offered is exactly what they'd do, and, cripes, I can't even remotely figure out how the hell a guy like you would be sent here for any other reason. This is the ex-villain squad, the dumping ground for the losers and the freaks. Even if you fell out of the sky like the Wizard of Oz then your criminal record should be as blank as the rest of your record."

"Dorothy's house fell out of the sky, the Wizard got lost in a ballooning accident." Steve corrected her amusedly. "And since nothing on my resume is checkable, all of it having happened in an alternate universe and everything, then they had to assign me as if I had officially zero credit for anything and zero seniority. I mean, for all they knew I could be a crazy homeless guy with random superpowers and a severe case of Munchausen's syndrome. So I have to prove myself starting from the absolute bottom on up, just like everybody else here."

"Makes sense… but you're still doing evaluations on all of us." Visi replied flatly. "Robert even asked you for some, just now."

"Robert is taking advantage of any ethical opportunity he can scrounge to achieve his mission, which is exactly what a good leader should be doing in his position." Cap said agreeably. "And of course I have opinions. We're all going into combat with each other, and we all should be trusting each other with our lives. So of course everybody's going to have a part of their brain constantly going 'Does that guy actually know what he's doing, or do I have to cover that flank myself?'"

"So be honest with me." Visi demanded. "Who on the team would be your first choice to work with, and who would be your last choice?"

"I'm not answering the one about 'last choice', because that would be talking behind peoples' backs again-" Cap began.

"Figures." Visi mumbled, narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

"But my first choice would be you." Steve continued.

Visi's jaw fell open, her cigarette landing unregarded upon the floor. She immediately stormed over, her face red with rage, to slam one fist against Cap's chest. "Don't fuck with me like that, you asshole!" she screamed, her voice tearing.

"Visi, I mean it." Cap said with as much sincerity as he could muster. "We've already talked about how I can't even talk to some of the others without probably getting in a fight. The rest I- well, I just don't think it would work. But we've already worked together-"

"Doesn't prove anything. You could probably have done that one without me at all." Visi mumbled.

"You're not incompetent, Visi, you're just a little impulsive." Cap said reassuringly. "And I think you take too many solo assignments when your abilities are better set up for teamwork. From what I've seen today you seem to do fine until you either lose track on the target or something unplanned goes wrong... and then you get taken down because you don't have any defensive powers and being an invisible skirmisher working alone only succeeds as long as you don't use up your margin of error or your luck. But if we're working in duo then that's not a concern – I'm a brightly colored distraction and a damage sponge, in addition to being a highly talented close-combatant, and that notably expands your opportunities."

Steve deliberately broke the tension by stopping to refill his coffee cup and continuing. "Some of the best tactical synergy I ever had back on my homeworld was with a woman just about your size and with a similar skill set. If the bad guys focused fire on me, they were wide open to being flanked or ambushed by her. If they were too focused on trying to find her sneaking around, then they were all set up like bowling pins for me. We never failed a mission whenever they partnered us together. So no, I don't think the warehouse today was a fluke. And now that you've put the idea in my head I think it would be a very good idea if Robert sent us out as a mission duo as often as he could swing it. Do you want me to ask him about that tomorrow?"

"I- I-" Visi stammered, entirely nonplussed at what she'd just heard. "I'll think about it!" she finally stammered out, and then immediately vanished.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Invisigal." Cap smiled softly at the empty room she'd left behind.

"Uh, Cap?" her voice floated back down the corridor. "It's Friday, remember?"

* * * * *

Author's Note: Yes, Cap's first reaction to the Z-Team in all its glory was to unass the room as soon as he politely could. Let's face it, he is not getting paid enough for that shit. *g*

Visi in canon thinks she did fine on the donut shop run (because it was actually notably less of a disaster than her usual performance, which just says so many sad things) and is shocked and angry when Robert rips a strip off her for it. This Visi was still angry at Robert's ass-chewing in this one, but she's much harder on herself about the donut run because this time she had a taste of genuine mission success with Cap first, so of course she's more aware of how unsatisfactory the donut run actually was.

And poor Visi. She has never been told by anyone in her life that she'd be their first choice for anything, not even once. Of course she couldn't believe what she was hearing.

cliffc999 · Dec 31, 2025

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 6

"Really sorry to do this to you, Captain, but we needed the help." Robert greeted him as Steve Rogers walked in the front door of the SDN offices that Saturday morning, dressed in civilian clothes.

"At least you're gettin' paid overtime." Chase grumbled affectionately. "Our asses are management. Salaried employees, Ain't makin' an extra dime out of these extra hours."

"You said this was an administrative problem?" Steve asked as the two of them headed across the unoccupied dispatch floor towards the branch manager's office.

"Blazer will explain it." Robert said. "And hey, at least we're finally getting the introduction out of the way too. But yeah, we've got a whole new mess we just turned up and we're all already overloaded trying to untangle it, so we'd appreciate an extra pair of hands helping with the logistics of it."

"Good morning, Captain." Blonde Blazer greeted him with a warm, open smile as she stood silhouetted in the morning light from her office window. She was the most improbably beautiful woman Steve had ever seen in his life, and he'd worked with both Peggy Carter and Natasha Romanov. Blonde Blazer was a statuesque golden-haired lady that Bucky would have unhesitatingly described as a 'stunner', and almost tall enough to look him in the eye and with eyes even more improbably blue than Steve's own. And unlike the celebrities he'd occasionally seen hanging around trying to get Tony's attention, even despite her PR-worthy smile and gestures she still felt like one of the most sincere people he'd ever met.

"First off, I'd like to say thank you for your service to our nation – even if it was an alternate dimension nation…" Blazer continued with a somehow endearing awkwardness. "And on behalf of Superhero Dispatch Network, we're honored that you chose us. Welcome aboard."

"Thank you, ma'am." Steve said sincerely, reaching out and taking the proffered handshake. "Mr. Robertson said you'd called me in about a… logistical problem?"

"Robert's fine. We're on a first-name basis here." Blazer reassured him. "Although I'm Blazer, not Blonde. Well, I am blonde, except-" She stopped and blushed slightly with embarrassment. "I'm useless before my morning coffee kicks in, please excuse me."

"I've lost count of the generals I've met who had the same problem." Steve politely made the excuse for her.

"Anyway." Robert interrupted brusquely. "What you said yesterday about checking for disruptions in the training schedule? You have no idea how right you were. As soon as we started digging into it, we found out that it was-" He trailed off.

"A complete and utter shitshow." Chase snorted. "Between how many dispatchers came and went and how many things they set up in the scheduling computer that were automatically cleared out when the dispatcher quit their assignment but then didn't reset properly-" He rubbed his aching forehead with four fingers. "Not only do we not know who's on first, we don't even know where the baseball field went. Somebody dug it up when nobody was payin' attention and now there's a damn landfill been built on it."

"Effectively, the Z-Team's been running wild with no guidance and no actual training for months, while our automated personnel system was completely oblivious to the real scope of the problem and we couldn't keep a human supervisor for them barely long enough to learn their names." Blazer admitted sheepishly. "And… that's on me." She slumped slightly. "I'm the branch manager, and I let my branch get this disorganized without my noticing."

"Ain't your fault they sent you to supervise a damn zoo full of rabid animals without any real zookeepers. I'm old, I can't do it all by myself, and my boy Robert's the first dispatcher we hired for them that didn't run away screamin' at the first dirty look." Chase consoled her.

"Maybe not my fault, but still my responsibility." Blazer faced up to it.

"How can I help?" Cap asked simply. "Although if you're here to discuss some kind of field promotion, I don't think that would work."

"I'd do it in a heartbeat if I could but you're right, if we even tried it then they'd all lose their fuckin' minds." Chase agreed. "You ain't even been here a long weekend yet and they don't remotely take the flag seriously, so trying to put you in a position of authority over the team would fly like an anvil in a damn Road Runner cartoon. No, that ain't our idea."

"Basically, we need to draw up an emergency training plan that can somehow cycle everybody through at least the core essentials of what they haven't learned yet, and do it in just a few weeks, and somehow be able to answer at least the necessary amount of service calls simultaneously while we're doing it. Blazer can't possibly shut down branch operations for that long." Robert explained.

Blazer looked at Steve entreatingly. "Corporate's already been talking for a while about shutting the Phoenix Program down as non-viable… and what we just discovered here really isn't going to help our position. Unless we can start showing some legitimate improvement in the Z-Team and do it before the end of the quarter, there's far too great a chance that the whole effort will be shut down." She looked away briefly, her voice turning wistful. "And as problematic as they've been so far, I'd really hate it if they couldn't make it. If they never really got a fair chance to."

"Well you know my opinion on Project Phoenix, and it's that we should have burnt the whole fuckin' thing down to the ground and then salted the earth from day one." Chase snorted derisively. "Ain't a one of them with any good in 'em at all." Off of both Blazer's and Robert's disappointed looks, he continued to Blazer without a pause. "But you already know my opinion and you're the boss, so if you say try and make this shit show work then all right, we'll try our damnedest to make it work. I ain't no backstabbin' sneak, unlike some."

Cap began to smile inwardly as he felt a familiar dynamic forming around him. Blazer was the commanding officer, and a genuinely inspiring and honest one if he was any judge, but also but one who'd apparently spent enough time in staff work that she'd gotten a little rusty at line command. And also one who was used to more conventional forces anyway and had no experience at dealing with a unit of misfits. Chase was like every crusty old sergeant-major he'd ever known, doing the detail work of keeping everything running and loyally guarding the commander's best interests even when he didn't agree with them. Robert's 'vibe' felt to Cap like a mustang, someone with serious field experience of some kind recently promoted to a junior officer position and expected to be the interface between the unit commander and the field team, the day-to-day hands-on ramrod keeping everything straight.

Not that this was the Army, Cap reminded himself.

"So we'll all obviously pitch in, but given that this is a big extra problem on top of our normal management workload I thought we'd take advantage of your experience." Blazer continued. "Specifically, that as the former CO of a military special operations unit you would be familiar with things like juggling operational scheduling commitments with training requirements and personnel and equipment availability."

"Operational plans and training. What the S-3 does in an Army battalion." Cap nodded. "Yes ma'am-"

"Blazer." She insisted with a smile.

"I'm entirely familiar with that kind of staff work." Cap continued. "I'm assuming we're going to be making an entire weekend project out of this?"

"You assume correctly." Chase grumbled affectionately. "Right, I spent a good chunk of last night diggin' out the relevant records. The raw records, seein' as how the computer tabulatin' ain't been worth shit. Our job today is going to be to turn all of that entire pile of random junk-" He pointed over at an entire stack of banker's boxes full of paper records visible through the glass window sitting on the conference room table. "Into an actual organized list of who still needs to learn what. Then we'll take that wish list and chop it down into what they absolutely need to know now and what we can push off to later."

"And only after that can we begin to start actually composing a plan for how we make that learning happen." Robert said commiseratingly. "But we can't even start to repair the damage until after we've finished troubleshooting all of the exact places the project's been damaged."

"Oh, and for my curiosity, can you tell me how you found about this problem we were having so quickly?" Blazer asked him earnestly. "Because that's a success I'd like to know how to reproduce."

"I got the clue from something Invisigal told me after the, uh, donut shop encounter." Cap admitted. "I did a little post-incident walkthrough of what had happened with her after I got there too late to back her up, and the informal debrief turned up that she hadn't checked the rear of the store to make sure the apparently departed perpetrator hadn't just hidden out at the scene waiting to ambush the first responders was because she'd never been told that she needed to."

"Oh." Blazer blinked in shock, as Robert looked briefly down at his shoes. "I can… see where that would have given you the clue, yes."

"I'd suggest that we do more after-action walkthroughs with the team after at least a sampling of their cases, but that would require me to believe there's a single one of them that would remotely take such a thing seriously." Robert said.

"I know." Blazer nodded. "I've tried to get Visi talking to me before about what she's been struggling with, and I've barely been able to get the time of day. And I don't know why."

"Up until a minute ago I might have guessed 'She wasn't trying to talk before because she didn't believe anyone would be willing to listen', but if you've tried to reach out to her before and that still didn't work then obviously I'm wrong." Cap admitted. "I can't begin to imagine you acting closed-minded or unduly dismissive of her concerns, ma'am, and surely she'd have seen the same thing." Blazer sighed microscopically to herself at Cap's form of address.

"She's just fucked up, don't strain your brains over it." Chase snorted.

"What was that about trying to achieve the objective even if you didn't necessarily agree?" Steve asked him mildly, and they briefly traded glares before Chase shrugged and yielded the point.

"Anyway, we've got a whole day's work ahead of us and more." Robert smoothed it over. "And even though I had something else I was hoping I'd be able to do this weekend, the job comes first. Come on, the day's not getting any longer."

"Agreed." Blazer led the way out to where the working area had been set up in the conference room. "Let's get started."

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 7

"-and that's when the first guy says 'Wait, you mean I had a parachute?'." Chase finished, and everyone at the table laughed.

By the second day of the project everyone had fallen into a relatively close camaraderie, and this particular lunch period had turned into a round of war stories about Chase's old days as the speedster superhero Track Star. Steve had been shocked to find out that the man he'd thought was a senior citizen was actually barely 40, and that Track Star's speed powers had prematurely aged his body and now he was physiologically too old to even survive the strain of using his abilities. Steve mourned inwardly at how a lifetime of dedicated public service had only rewarded Chase with an early death, but the man himself seemed to have come to peace with it – in his own cranky semi-elderly way.

Blazer had had to fly out for a company-mandated weekend PR gala of some kind that morning, but she was expected back to help finish up the afternoon. The training schedule project hadn't been completed yet, but they'd finished charting all the deficiencies, composing a small set of remedial essential skills courses that at least covered the most important basics right away, and started working out a scheduling plan for cycling everybody through it with only an incremental loss of capacity to answer the service calls.

The phone on the conference room table rang, and Chase picked it up and listened briefly. "That was the front gate. Food's here."

"We'll get it." Robert said, and him and Steve got up and headed out into the corridor.

"Okay, I apologize in advance if this is one of those personal questions that offends." Robert broke into the silence as he and Steve walked back from the front both carrying the bags of takeout they'd had delivered. "But it's been making me wonder all weekend. Obviously it wouldn't be a problem but are you… you know, 'don't ask don't tell'?" he finished embarrassedly.

"That… is not a question I'm usually asked." Steve blinked in mild shock. "I'm not offended, but I am confused as to what could possibly have brought it up. And, no."

"Literally every other man I've seen interact with her, present company included, can't help but pine at least a little for Blonde Blazer." Robert explained as they re-entered the conference room and began laying out the food. "Especially not when first meeting her and before they finally have to accept that they've got no shot. But you…" Robert shook his head. "You clearly didn't dislike her, but absolutely nothing has sparked between you two all weekend. And that's completely outside my experience, so I wondered." He shrugged. "Sorry, I've got sort of an engineer brain, so I can't help but obsess a little when I find an anomaly in a pattern."

"I'm very familiar with 'engineer brain'." Steve agreed, his memory briefly flashing back to some of Tony's own historic moments in overthinking about what was going on around him. "And… not to sound conceited, but I like to think I can understand what it's like to have your physical beauty be the only thing anyone can see about you as a person." Steve shrugged. "So if I could personally spare her from having to deal with even a bit of that, then I would." Steve sighed mournfully. "One of the finest women I ever knew first caught my eye because she'd been the only one who'd been able to do that for me."

Robert looked up curiously, then immediately caught Steve's expression and moved to change the subject. "Well, at least you were one step ahead of me. Because I, uh, kinda made an idiot of myself during my job interview with her." he confessed ruefully.

"Hah!" Chase laughed and slapped the table. "Oh, are we tellin' that story? Because if we are then I've got to get into the part where-"

"Chase." Robert moaned exasperatedly as he buried his head in his hands. "We're not getting into that part. But-" he sighed. "She was giving me the corporate recruitment pitch over friendly drinks, but she'd forgotten that the drinks in Crypto Night can come super fortified. Either that, or she'd misestimated her capacity. Because we both got just a little buzzed, and since I hadn't picked up yet that she was trying a recruiting offer I thought I was being flirted with, and-" he trailed off, blushing.

"Hey, thank God that at least you didn't try to slip her any tongue." Chase laughed at Robert's mournful expression.

"Even if there was a mistaken kiss, she obviously doesn't hold it against you." Steve reassured him. "I didn't see a bit of awkwardness between you two."

"Oh, she is a super sweetheart that way." Robert sighed wistfully. "I'm such an idiot."

"Trust me, it could have been worse." Steve fought down a smile. "I got caught in an unwanted kiss once, and-" he broke off chuckling. "It was different in that my mistake had been underestimating just how far a certain young woman who had ambitions of being Girlfriend America was willing to go in trying to achieve those ambitions. And so one day we were talking at work, and the next thing she's grabbing me by the collar and laying a big one right on my lips entirely without asking me, and I didn't react quickly enough to pull away in time."

"How's that your mistake?" Chase chuckled. "Unless she was ugly."

"Gorgeous, but not a very nice personality." Steve admitted. "No, the uncomfortable part was when the lady I had been… involved with… entered the room while this was still going on."

"Oh man." Robert facepalmed in male sympathy. "So how long were you on the couch?"

"Oh, she was entirely calm and professional." Steve replied. "Right up until the point later that afternoon when it came time for the laboratory test of whether or not my new shield really was bulletproof, when she eagerly volunteered to be part of the experiment. While I was still holding it."

"Seriously?!?" Robert jawdropped.

"Four shots rapid-fire at point-blank range, all dead center in the bullseye." Steve nodded. "I didn't get hurt, of course, my shield was the most invulnerable thing on the planet. But I almost needed new underwear."

"And that didn't count as a break-up for you?" Chase snorted. "Remember what I fuckin' said about you havin' no self-preservation instinct at all?"

"I guess my type is the feisty ones." Steve shrugged. "Which in hindsight would also be another answer to your question. Not that I'm implying Blazer's not good at her job-"

"Oh yeah, she can throw down just fine when she needs to." Robert agreed. "But you're right, she prefers to be a much more gentle type of person when she doesn't need to."

"Wait." Steve suddenly realized. "The night before last, I was in Crypto Night – briefly – and the bartender was complaining to me that Blonde Blazer had just left right before I arrived, with someone that she'd been 'flirting heavily' with. Was that you?"

"Shit." Robert swore. "First Visi and now Cap? Sorry, not your fault, but my secret ID security seems to be getting about as airtight as a colander." He looked Steve directly in the eye. "Yeah, you guessed right. I'm Mecha Man. Please don't spread that around. Some of your teammates are people I used to put in jail, and we don't need any more tension in the mix than we've got already."

"How did Invisigal find out?" Steve wondered.

"How else? Sneakin' around invisible and spyin' on everyone's shit, like she always does." Chase grumbled.

"To be fair, it was Blazer's and my fault for discussing it right there in the conference room without making sure we were alone." Robert said evenly. "We can't criticize Visi for loitering around a public area of the building she legitimately has access to, even if she was less than visible at the time." He nodded to Steve. "And if Steve still didn't know about it until I gave myself away just now, Visi's obviously been keeping her promise not to gossip about it."

"She certainly did." Steve agreed.

"See? It's all good." Robert said to Chase, who confined himself to a minimal eye-roll in response.

"Obviously I wasn't here at the time, but after what I overheard at Crypto Night I went and looked things up. So I'm familiar with the outline of your story." Steve began. "Words aren't really adequate for something like this, but I'm sorry for your losses. And the largest thing that made me reconsider if I wanted to be part of LA's corporate 'hero' community at all was hearing the lack of respect some of them had for the sacrifices that you've made." He finished sincerely.

"Thank you." Robert acknowledged soberly. "But one of the reasons I took this job is because SDN offered to fund the reconstruction of my armor in return for my helping salvage the Phoenix Program. So even if it's still very early days, there's still hope."

"I'm glad to hear that." Steve congratulated him, to Chase's approving grumble.

Blazer's footsteps coming down the corridor heralded her arrival, and shortly after the tap-tap of her costume's boots on the floor first became audible she entered the room. "Eugh, what a morning." she sighed disgustedly, before eyeing the takeout containers on the table. "Oooh, you got Chinese?"

"Usual dog and pony shitshow even worse than usual?" Chase said as he pushed a container over to her.

"I ran into one of the SDN vice-presidents there, and honestly, do they even read the reports I send them?" she pouted cutely as she helped herself to a portion of teriyaki. "I was doing an initial exploration of the feasibility of that idea we discussed Friday, not sending them an action plan! I don't even know why it crossed his desk at all, but he actually had read it and since we'd bumped into each other, he gladly gave me a heads-up on how he'd decided to answer a proposal I hadn't actually made yet!"

"Wait, you already got a decision about that idea?" Robert asked in shock. "The proposal about cutting someone from the program to send a hardline message to the others? Uh, I thought that you said you were going to think that one over and then discuss it with us again before even submitting it?"

"I did!" She pleaded. "And I was! The only thing I was asking the head office about was if it was even possible for us to do it at all, or if their employment contracts would mean that we'd need to show more cause! Just a 'if this was going to happen, could it even happen?' question for Legal to advise us on so we'd have the proper information to make a decision with! But instead-"

"Excuse me, ma'am." Steve broke in concernedly. "Robert's just gotten here, and the company already intends to lay someone off? Leaving the question entirely aside of who and with what cause, I can't think of anything that would undercut his authority more in the eyes of the people you're hoping he can lead. Because regardless of the truth of the matter the view from the trenches could see only one of two things – that either he's just a powerless figurehead for a faceless head office's whims, or else that he personally decided to make his introduction to the team be arbitrarily bouncing one of their teammates."

"Shit." Chase blinked. "Man's not wrong. I mean, I'd cut the whole damn team if I could, but they already know I fuckin' hate them. Robert can't do his job if they think he's the one out to screw them." He blinked. "Hey, you think it might save our boy's street cred if you just blamed it all on me?"

"While you are effectively my deputy branch manager here, officially you're just a senior dispatcher." Blazer pointed out. "So no, I don't think it would fly. Not unless I suddenly swapped you in as their official dispatcher, but that would be even more obvious as a face-saving gesture."

"Plus, I'm not sure we even should cut anyone. And if we did, then how would we choose?" Robert agreed.

"Lowest performer?" Blazer suggested, before wincing with realization.

Everyone's gaze involuntarily shifted over to the giant status display board clearly visible from anywhere on the office floor, the one that displayed the weekly performance rankings of all heroes assigned to any of the several teams in the Torrance branch. The display whose bottommost name, by a wide margin, was Invisigal's.

"You didn't see her face after we completed the warehouse assignment. Or when I arrived at the donut shop shortly after Lightningstruck got away. She was so happy that we'd gotten a 100% mission success on the first one, and she was heartbroken at missing the second one." Steve pleaded softly. "I'm certain that Visi really wants to do good here, ma'am, all of her surface… irreverence… aside. She's just… struggling with it."

"I believe she does too, Steve." Blazer agreed gently. "But… the layoff 'approval' I got was basically a direct order."

"Speakin' as the one here with zero personal investment in any of the people involved, I suggest that we-" Chase looked rapidly at expressions around at the table. "-get out a fuckin' dart board and just start throwin'. Whoever we hit will have fucked up somethin' worthy of gettin' themselves fired recently, 'cause there ain't a one of 'em that hasn't."

"As arbitrary as that sounds that might actually have to be our fallback position, assuming that Blazer can't convince corporate that our training schedule revision should be the 'fix it' plan instead." Robert shook his head.

"I'm the one member of the Z-Team who has job offers open elsewhere." Steve said slowly, wondering curiously at his own reluctance. "Would it help if I threw myself on the grenade?"

"You're not part of the Phoenix Program, even if you're on the Z-Team." Robert said slowly. "It wouldn't count."

"Well, the dart board's not plan A. And definitely not the grenade." Blazer decided. "You guys are going to have to finish the rest of the paperwork without me today, because I need to start composing the best position paper I've ever composed in my life. Hopefully I can convince someone else downtown that was a serious failure to communicate somewhere and that this 'approval' should be round-filed retroactively, while I drag my feet enough on the actual laying off to give us time to show results."

"You get back to your office and fire up the word processor. We'll keep the home fires burnin' for you down here in the trenches." Chase assured her.

"Thanks, guys." Blazer said. "And Steve? I'm sorry that overhearing this puts you on a spot, but you can't tell Visi about any of this in advance. And that's whether or not I can head off this layoff mandate."

"Yes ma'am." Steve agreed bitingly, before sighing and continuing more softly. "I'm sorry if that sounded insolent, but I am… not feeling kindly disposed towards corporate life right at this moment."

"That makes two of us." Blazer agreed sadly.

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 8

"Morning, Captain." Invisigal greeted him cheerfully as she saw Cap standing in the lobby. "Holding open the door like a gentleman? What, you couldn't get enough of me?" she smirked.

"Visi…" Cap began awkwardly. "Okay, remember Friday how you almost mentioned something while talking to me, and then remembered that you weren't supposed to talk about it? Something you'd overheard around the office?"

"Yeah." She agreed concernedly. "Oh fuck, it got out anyway and they think I spilled the tea? Why do they always blame-?"

"No, no, you're clear. It's not about that." Cap rushed to assure her. "What I wanted to say is that now I'm in a similar position. They had me doing some weekend work, and in the process I picked up a piece of information that I was specifically forbidden from telling anyone else on the team until after it's made public." He sighed. "If it's made public, because they're still not sure if it will happen. I just wanted to make sure that you knew ahead of time, if I didn't tell you it was because I couldn't tell you."

"Corporate bullshit incoming, huh?" Visi's face turned sour. "Yeah, that figures." She looked back up at Cap and her expression softened. "Thanks for being up front about it. But I get it, they put you on the spot just the same way I was put on the spot. So I know how it goes."

"Thanks for understanding." Cap nodded.

"Not the thing I'm most famous for doing." Visi agreed cheekily. "But I guess there's an exception to every-" She suddenly went silent and faded into invisibility right before Flambae and Malevola came around the corner of the hallway, and didn't reappear until after they'd swept briskly by.

"Let's not enter the conference room together." Cap acknowledged her unspoken request, and deliberately went to go get a drink at the water fountain while Visi nodded and went ahead.

The usual round of pre-shift banter, jokes, and posturing fell silent as Cap entered the room. "Hey, star-spangled boy." Flambae said. "They missed your introduction to the team on Friday, but you're already well up on the leaderboard after just one day. So is that your power, mmm? Super-good at sucking corporate cock?" he sneered.

"I wouldn't dare presume to challenge whoever might be the local champion in that regard." Cap replied flatly, something about the arrogant bully's mannerisms bringing out the worst of his smart mouth. "But I'm certain that you earned your spot at the top of the leaderboard entirely through hard work and merit."

Visi almost choked trying to smother her giggles, but went unnoticed because Punch Up's table-slapping guffaw and Prism's peals of laughter drew everyone's attention instead, while most of the rest of the room was still in shock. "Ooo, soldier boy's got teeth!" Prism called out cheerfully. "Were you a pilot, Captain? Because that was some serious napalm strike just got dropped right here!"

"You think you're real hot shit, huh?" Flambae raged, stepping forward to try and intimidate Cap… before realizing as he drew closer that his target was not only slightly taller than him but somewhat wider.

"In the spirit of good teamwork, I'm going to deliberately pass on making the joke you just walked right into." Cap replied with a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth expression. Flambae blinked in confusion for several moments before turning red at the realization.

"My advice? Time for a tactical retreat." Coupe's quiet voice broke in from where she was lounging menacingly nearby.

"Yeah." Flambae growled. "Maybe I catch you later, spangle-man. But for right now, we go on shift." He sulkily returned to his seat.

"So, I believe you asked me for an introduction?" Cap asked mildly, moving to the head of the table and assuming a deliberately stiff position of parade rest. "All right. My call sign is Captain America. My enhanced abilities include superhuman strength, reaction time, and endurance, and my skillset includes tier-one Special Forces training and extensive combat experience. I was a classified military super-soldier project in the World War II of an alternate timeline and spent multiple tours on the front line in the European theatre, and was then frozen in cryogenic suspension for decades. I was eventually retrained and retasked for modern military special operations by the intelligence community, and then ended up involuntarily dimensionally-displaced to here. And now I'm at SDN and enjoying my first opportunity to… have a more normal work life, instead of having nothing but missions and orders. I hope that we can work well together." he finished his impromptu orientation speech.

"Confirmed kills?" Coupe raised an almost-impressed eyebrow.

"Classified." Cap answered her curtly, before stepping aside at hearing footsteps behind him.

"Good morning, everyone." Blonde Blazer greeted them all as she entered the room to their mild discomfiture. "I… wanted you to hear this announcement from me personally, and not from anyone else. I also want to emphasize that the following decision is one that I and all the senior staff at SDN, specifically including your dispatcher, have vigorously protested. But we were unfortunately overruled by the head office. You have my – our – heartfelt apologies for this, but…" She trailed off. "They won't change what has to happen."

Steve's heart sank into his boots as he realized what was coming.

"The leaderboard rankings will be recalculated at the end of shift today." Blazer continued resolutely even as her voice was shaded with disappointment and sorrow. "And at that time, whichever member of the Phoenix Program is the lowest in the rankings will be cut from the team."

Steve sadly nodded to Visi in wordless acknowledgement and apology of what he'd been helpless to prevent or warn her against, and his entire world narrowed down to the helpless look in her frightened eyes.

* * * * *

Author's Note: Yup, it's cut day. Everybody who played the game knew it had to come eventually.

And yes, Steve has a surprisingly sassy mouth if he really gets going. Bucky can tell you chapter and verse about what a smartass Steve is if you flick him on the raw. And if you're wondering at Flambae's reaction, the answer is that it's generally a bad idea to hand someone a straightline about "hot shit" if you have flame powers.

In the game, the cut idea is Blonde Blazer's. I tried to keep that in the sense it was an idea she was considering, but would obviously reject when Steve contributed his own input… but then I had corporate jam it down her throat anyway, because it is reasonable she'd check the feasibility of the idea ahead of time and it's already established that SDN corporate is looking for an excuse to just tube the whole Phoenix Program as they think it's a money pit.

You don't usually think of 'Captain America' and 'paperwork' in the same sentence, but nobody keeps legitimate rank in the military without at least being not incompetent at the admin side. Logistics really do make everything run. Besides, it gave me a reason to have the guys hanging out without having to give Steve an unrealistic-under-the-circumstances promotion.

And lastly… Steve, do you think there might be a reason why you don't have the slightest spark with an absolute sweetheart of a dame you might otherwise easily fall for, while simultaneously finding yourself surprisingly reluctant to leap on a golden opportunity to quit a team whose entire membership - with only one exception - you don't really like? *g*

PS: It's okay, Mandy won't be lonely. This timeline's Robert is gone-gone on the Blazer route.

cliffc999 · Dec 31, 2025

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 8

"How's she been doing?" Cap asked worriedly as he checked in with dispatch after his most recent assignment that morning.

"Still at the beach cleanup with Golem." Robert answered him on the individual channel. "It's going to take them more than a while to finish up, but at least they're not sabotaging each other. And while she's not going to pile up any positive points on a mundane run like that at least she's not losing any either, and there's still the afternoon to hope for."

"It's been like watching sharks in a feeding frenzy." Cap replied disgustedly. "Coupe had Sonar ambushed and handcuffed to the gym equipment before we'd even gotten out of the building, and outside of Golem and Visi they've all been interfering in each other's missions all morning! They don't even have the courtesy to not brag about it on the open channel!"

"Even Flambae got in on it, and he was so high up on the leaderboard he didn't need to do anything to guarantee keeping his job except show up for work today." Robert agreed. "I almost wonder if corporate wanted to wreck the entire thing we're trying to build here, because this was the exact wrong move at the exact wrong time. I've started having to match with friends just to try and find mission teams that won't kill each other out there over a percentage point, never mind being able to actually match powers and skillsets to assignment requirements… and someone just locked Flambae in a sensory deprivation tank. Where did they even get a sensory deprivation tank?" he trailed off disgustedly. "Okay, Cap, your next call is a joint run with Sonar, I've texted you the details. I've got to switch channels and hack our least favorite hothead a way out of there."

"On the way." Cap sighed and drove off to the rendezvous point. After waiting several minutes, the man-bat and former financial scammer Sonar flew down out of the sky and landed alongside.

"Captain." Sonar said nervously. "So, uh, we'll be… working together, I see."

"Relax." Cap said assuredly. "I know what kind of morning you've been having, but I'm not here to make it worse."

"That's what she said." Sonar replied suspiciously.

"What possible motive would I even have?" Cap replied, starting to get exasperated. "The cut is going to happen to the lowest-ranking member of the Phoenix Program, which I'm not a part of. I have absolutely no motive to sabotage you."

Sonar narrowed his eyes. "Really? I might be an involuntarily transformed creature of the night, Captain, but I'm not an idiot. We both know that I'm the second-lowest in the rankings… and that if I blow another assignment today the lowest-ranking doesn't even need to win anymore, she just needs to not lose. And I know you've got a soft spot for Invisigal."

"I hadn't even considered your spot in the rankings." Cap replied honestly. "But no. I do want to help her, but I'm not going to help her that way."

"I have enhanced hearing." Sonar said even more suspiciously. "And I was near the break room last Friday. I heard you talking to her and I heard you and our dispatcher talking about her, so don't try to con me. Look, can you just… stay out here and let me sink or swim on my own, instead of actively trying to push me under? Can you at least cut me that much slack?"

"I… won't deny that I felt tempted just now. Momentarily." Cap admitted reluctantly. "And I'm deeply ashamed of myself that I felt it for even a moment. But I don't want to help Visi keep her job, I want to help her become the better person she wishes she was. And cheating to win will only do one of those two things." He huffed disgustedly. "I really wish I didn't seem to be the only person on the team who felt that way this morning."

"Hey, I haven't screwed anyone over yet, I've only been screwed." Sonar denied heatedly. "But… okay, I get that. I mean…" He trailed off. "I know that I creep people out, and that I don't really seem to like anyone except Malevola, and that I get on everyone's nerves, and that I relapse… but I really need to keep this, okay?" He pleaded. "Not just the paycheck, but the… the system, the structure." He sighed. "By myself it was just… the cocaine, and the cybercrime, and everything else that landed me in jail in the first place. And I'm sick of it, but I can't seem to help it." He slumped dejectedly. "Not by myself."

"… then it's a good thing that you're not by yourself." Cap held out his hand, and after a long pause Sonar reached out to shake it. "Oh, and our dispatch system assigned a recovering narcotics addict to a drug bust?" he continued more lightly.

"The idea was that I pose as the buyer." Sonar nodded knowingly. "Which I'm a slam dunk at, given how many actual buys I used to make. But as soon as they incriminate themselves by actually showing the drugs and touching the cash, you're going to need to come in pretty fast."

"Don't worry. I've got your back." Cap assured him.

* * * * *

"All Z-Team back to base and in the conference room in thirty minutes." Robert's quietly furious voice sounded in Cap's headset. It was almost lunchtime, and a mid-day meeting was unusual to say the least. But from what Cap had been able to overhear on the team chat, the morning had been a disaster.

"Cap, come see me at my cubicle before the meeting." Robert continued on the individual channel as he pulled into the SDN parking lot. Very shortly after that Cap was walking through the dispatcher floor to Robert's booth.

"If corporate saw what they were doing out there this morning, they'd probably cut the whole damn team." Robert greeted him wearily as he rubbed his forehead with both sets of fingers. "What an absolute zoo. I've got only a few minutes to come up with the speech of my career, and I don't have the slightest idea what I'm going to say to them."

"Well, this morning I learned that I might not have been giving some of them the credit that they deserved." Cap admitted frankly. "Sonar is struggling with his addiction a lot more than he lets people see, but he seems to genuinely not like how he currently is and wants to ditch it. And he only needed a little help to stay steady through our assignment this morning." Cap shrugged. "I still don't know anything about the rest of them, but if even one more of them has a hidden depth, then maybe-"

"What I really wanted to talk to you about was Invisigal." Robert interrupted sadly. "The beach clean-up ate up almost her whole morning, but she had a joint call with Malevola right before I called a time-out. A burglar sighting that turned out to be Lightningstruck, actually."

"Is she okay?" Cap asked quickly.

"Bad guy got away because somebody deliberately tripped somebody else up, and both of them are accusing the other one." Robert sighed. "And one of them turns invisible and the other one has short-range teleportals, so even trying to plot the timing of their movements from what few camera sightings were available to figure out which one could have actually been where at the critical moment is impossible." He looked up at Cap sympathetically. "I know you had hopes for Visi, and I even shared them, but if this kind of crap is still happening at the first hurdle even with all the extra encouragement she was being given then I think she just made up the management team's mind for us. And if I announce the cut right now, then at least the rest of the team can get back on track. I wanted to at least give you the courtesy of a heads-up instead of letting you walk into it cold."

"Triage?" Cap shook his head firmly. "No. If you had proof she was guilty, then… honestly, no, not even then. If you cut everybody who allegedly sabotaged somebody else this morning, you'd be down to a team of three. Blazer already announced what the criteria for the decision would be and when they would be applied, you should commit to that."

"I didn't think you would agree." Robert nodded. "And hell, I don't want to believe it either! But even if it is just Visi's word versus Malevola's, what possible reason would Malevola have to push Invisigal further down? Visi was already at the bottom, there's no point to putting her further down!"

"The reverse also applies. Why would Invisigal sabotage Malevola if she was already that far beneath her? One failed assignment wouldn't be enough to put Malevola beneath Visi, which would mean there'd be no point in Visi doing it either because it still wouldn't get her off the bottom." Cap pointed out reasonably.

"That's entirely logical, but we both know Visi isn't always the most logical person when she gets upset about something." Robert rubbed his nose meaningfully.

"Wait." Cap realized. "Something Sonar said this morning… Malevola's not only his friend but his Nar-Anon sponsor. And if Malevola didn't know that Sonar was having a clean assignment this morning, she might have been afraid that Invisigal might lap ahead of him. I know Sonar himself was very worried about Visi breathing down his neck."

"You think Malevola might have been doing a favor for a friend?" Robert blinked. "That makes sense, but it's still not evidence… but that's the point, there's no evidence. And at least your theory raises a reasonable doubt." He exhaled relievedly. "Which is all you need for acquittal. Okay then, it's still wide open. Which I'm good with, even if it still leaves me with the wacky sabotage races to deal with."

"If I had any more advice, I'd be giving it." Cap shrugged. "I'll go on ahead so it doesn't look like we were collaborating before you come in."

"I'll wait a couple, then catch up." Robert agreed.

Cap didn't have a chance to have a word with Visi before meeting up in the conference room, and didn't dare throw her too encouraging a smile or a gesture in front of the others. Which lack of opportunity to reassure her was disappointing, given that the cheerfully insouciant Invisigal of the morning had given way to a taut, sullen person who had her shoulders planted firmly against the back corner of the room as she warily glared at everyone else.

Cap took up what was becoming his usual position standing near the door and waited. Blazer and Chase both entered, but neither one said anything as they simply took positions around the periphery and waited as silent observers. The room remained full of nothing but suspicion and weariness until all eyes turned to the door to get what for most of them was their first look at their new dispatcher.

"Barring the obvious exception, most people would look around this room and see a bunch of villains." Robert began without preamble, his voice a firm, low rasp. "Not even the super kind. Just plain ass, run of the mill, vanilla fuckin' villains." He stared fearlessly around the room at each one of them in turn. "But that's not what I see. Because lucky for you, I'm not most people. When I look around this room, what I see… is fear."

A ripple of upset reactions went around the room as Robert continued without pause. "You're afraid you're gonna fuck it up again! Like the last time someone gave you a shot… and the time before that… and the time before that. You're afraid of letting people down again. You're afraid of letting yourself down again."

Even from his vantage point on the diametric opposite of the room, Cap saw the brief flash of sorrow, of vulnerability, in Visi's downcast gaze before she assumed her sullen mask again. Robert's speech rolled on without pause. "If you want those times to be different than those other times… I'm here to help." He finished simply.

"You are all part of the Phoenix Program. Any of you know what a phoenix is?" Robert asked.

"Ooh, uh, a city in Arizona." Malevola said amusedly.

"Yeah, the sweltering ballsack of America." Flambae drawled.

"Nah, if Florida's the dick then Louisiana's gotta be the ballsack." Chase wisecracked. "Just, y'know, positionally-"

"The phoenix," Robert interrupted firmly. "according to legend, is a beautiful bird of prey that was so tired of its immortality it tricked the Sun God into dropping a spark on its nest to set it ablaze and burning it to shit. But, instead of dying the Phoenix emerged from ash, reborn. All of you here are phoenixes, and it's obvious what that means." Robert leaned forward and planted both hands firmly on the table. "But for you dumb ones, I'll spell it out."

"The phoenix symbolizes redemption. It's what you're here for." Robert said quietly. "It's what connects everyone in this room… even if you don't want to admit it yet. Because ultimately, you all had a choice to be here. Sure, for some of you the choice was either this or prison… but was anybody in this room really afraid of prison? Or lacking that much confidence in their ability to escape or their lawyer's ability to bullshit an appeal?"

The mood in the room began to shift as Robert continued, as he paradoxically managed to combine an appeal to their pride as veteran criminals with a motivation to change that status. "I've seen your rap sheets, and they were all a long and miserable read. None of you half-assed the job of becoming assholes, you all put some real commitment into it. Especially not today, given how most of you have been busy trying to push the others down, as if stomping other people's shit flatter and then climbing on top of it left you anywhere except still standing in the same place and with your shoes covered in shit." Flambae actually broke out in a brief laugh at that one, acknowledging the hit, as Robert continued. "So it's time to stop that shit and put that same degree of commitment into something new. Into replacing the people you are with the people you want to be."

Robert began to pace slowly again. "Look, while all of you own your own shit, I'll admit that SDN screwed up too. You really didn't help with the dispatcher roulette you were playing earlier, but we should have caught the bug in our training systems a lot earlier than we did. So you were expected to know how to do jobs that you hadn't been fully trained yet in how to do, and now you're all worried about being cut for not doing that job well enough. And that seems unfair to you because it is. Blazer wasn't blowing smoke up your ass when she told you this morning that we'd done everything we could to get those corpo fuckheads at the head office to pull their heads out and give us a fair chance to fix the mistake instead of dumping the blame on you, and they didn't. But even if they can't pull their heads out of their asses, at least we can still choose not to play favorites. And that's why the cut decision remains open, and will remain open right up until the deadline today and be based strictly on merit and nothing else. Because even if the rules aren't fair to us, we can still be fair to each other. And we need to be, or else nothing we try here will ever work."

"Why should we even believe you, boss-man?" Flambae sneered.

"Hey, there's an option B for if you don't believe me, and I'm just about to tell you what it is." Robert replied mildly. "So this is how it's going to be. If any of you aren't really serious about trying to un-fuck your fucked-up lives, if this is just a place you're going to coast until you can finish your time and get back to doing crime, then you can stand up and quit right now. You can save me and Blazer the burden of having to pick which one of you gets the ax, and save all of your teammates from having to worry about being cut. Because if you're not actually interested in redemption, if you already know you can't conquer your fear of failure, then why stay here at all?"

Robert smiled thinly at the room. "That's the carrot. So now you get to hear the stick. The stick is the one you'll beat yourself up with if you decide to stay here and then half-ass it. The stick is you knowing that you not only backed away from the challenge, but you couldn't even have the balls to admit to yourself that's what you were doing. The stick is your own pride."

He crossed his arms and looked at them firmly. "If you leave this room individually, then you leave. You go back to the justice system and try something else. Who knows, they might even give you credit for time served here and let you walk. But if you leave this room with the rest of the team then you're with the rest of the team. And so from that minute forward you'll be expected to perform like you are." Robert uncrossed his arms and leaned confidently back. "That's it. No more speechifying. Your move."

Everybody in the room looked warily at each other, their expressions various forms of disbelieving, challenging, or pensive. Sonar looked at Malevola, Flambae and Prism exchanged glances, Coupe raised a disbelieving eyebrow at a shrugging Punch Up. Invisigal's mask of defiance fell away to be replaced by doubt as she traded a slow, disbelieving glance with Cap. Everyone drew support from what friends or colleagues on the team they had.

And nobody moved.

"All right then." Robert acknowledged after a long moment. "Now get back out there, Z-Team. We've got a shift to finish."

The team stood up as one and headed out, full of nervousness… but also purpose. Cap stood by the door, waiting for Visi, as her position at the back of the room would leave her as last out.

"Visi…" Cap began lowly.

"I heard about Sonar and you." Visi snapped at him as she walked by, and Cap and Robert started following her down the corridor. "You had to spend your morning helping the one guy I actually had a chance of passing still stay ahead of me?" Her voice slightly shook with the effort of not breaking.

"He didn't pick that assignment, Visi." Robert said softly. "I did. The calls come in as they come in, I can only pick the people who are up on the board. And you were…"

"Stuck on the beach." Visi said bitterly. "But you still couldn't have- oh, the hell with it."

"Visi, I-" Cap began again.

"Save it. I've got to get back out there and hustle." Visi cut him off. "Because it looks like I've barely got four hours left to save my ass… all by myself." She turned invisible before anyone could say anything and left the two men standing in the hallway.

"Well, at least she's motivated by something now." Robert tried to say consolingly. "Let's hope the tough love will work even if the kindness hasn't."

"Robert, before I go back out, I just have to say that was maybe the best leadership speech I've ever heard." Cap told him.

"I was pulling that shit straight out of my ass." Robert admitted. "But what you'd just said to me, about having to hope that there was some kind of wish to change down in them that we just hadn't seen yet? I figured trying to pull that to the surface was the only chance we had. Because if they don't actually want to change, nothing will ever make them."

"Gotta have hope, right?" Cap sighed, and with a nod to them all he headed out.

* * * * *

Less than an hour before end of shift, Invisigal sat smoking on a playground swing as she slowly rocked back and forth.

Despite her newfound motivation and spite, her afternoon shift had been a disaster. The one joint assignment she'd been able to get with Captain America had gone adequately at best – they'd managed to stop the runaway train, but not before there had been a nontrivial amount of property damage. And the two calls she'd handled alone had been disasters. A bodyguard job at the pier had ended with her spotting and disarming the assassin before they'd even known she was there, but his stray shot as she'd knocked him down from ambush had put a hole in the windshield of the client's limo and he'd furiously turned in the lowest customer satisfaction score possible. And the one with some strange cult recruiting outside a bookstore with what had turned out to be enchanted pamphlets that hypnotized those who read them had been dealt with by her simply setting the pamphlets on fire… which, while it had freed the cultists and their victims from the brainwashing, had knocked them all temporarily unconscious from the backlash and thus had the ending of her case be officially classified as 'excessive collateral damage', also completely trashing her score.

"Visi? You did good. It was three for three and nobody actually got hurt, not even the sleeping beauties." Robert tried to reassure her as she sat their dejectedly. "As for the relatively minor property damage, it wasn't even nearly the worst on the team today let alone historically."

"Yeah, but you're not judging. The system is. And we both know how it'll be scored officially." Her voice was low and weary, her earlier defiance and energy all gone. "But hey, at least I made it easy for you."

Her phone vibrated, and she looked down at the incoming text from Cap. Are you okay?

Visi sighed again and returned the phone to her pocket, the text unanswered.

"No, you're not making it easy for me." Robert said. "Cutting you would not be easy at all."

"Yeah, that's me, everybody's pity project." Visi pouted miserably. "And even with all the extra carries in the world, I still can't get it done." She shook her head disgustedly. "I slowed Cap down so we missed the first jump onto the train, I didn't stop to think that maybe setting voodoo shit on fire might have a backlash on the people linked to it, and I blew the takedown on the shooter." She took another long, miserable drag on her cigarette and coughed slightly. "I guess my thick head is so thick that fate had to knock extra hard on it today to finally pound through the message."

"Fate? The heck are you talking about?" Robert asked.

Visi's phone vibrated again. Visi, I know you had a bad afternoon. Check in, please? The text read.

She put the phone back down and tapped her mike. "Look, I tried, okay? It just wasn't meant to be. Some people are born to be heroes, but I'm clearly not one of them. Blazer, Phenomaman, Cap… those are the real hero types. They've got… hero powers. Strong, brave, right out there for everyone to see. Nothing to hide."

"What's your point, Visi?" Robert asked gently.

"My point is that I have fuckin' villain powers, okay?" She replied heatedly. "I turn invisible, I skulk in the shadows. My powers are only good for stealing shit, spying on people... stabbing 'em in the back. And that's on top of how I can consistently fuck up even the simplest fucking things." She slumped dejectedly. "I'm just not hero material, and I never will be. And the sooner we all stop kidding ourselves about that, the sooner I can stop torturing myself with it."

"Heroes aren't born, Visi. They're made." Robert insisted.

"Yeah, well, you can't make bricks out of shit." Visi replied. "And besides, unless a miracle drops out of the fuckin' sky and lands right on top of my head in the next maybe thirty minutes, it's not even my decision to make."

There was a brief pause on the line, and then Robert came back. "Okay, I used to think fate was bullshit, but you've almost made me a believer. Because you tempted fate hardcore and she just answered us. That Lightningstruck asshole that's been on a spree? Just showed up on a silent alarm two blocks from your location. Maybe third time will be the charm."

"More like strike three and I'm out." Visi shook her head. "Send someone that can actually catch him. He's been trashing shit all over town, he needs to actually be stopped this time."

"Yes, and that's why you need to clock back in and go stop him." Robert insisted.

Visi stared down helplessly at her shoes as she dug her toes in the sandlot.

"Visi? Are you there?" Robert insisted. His voice faded away to an indeterminate buzz in her ears as she just closed her eyes and let the depression win, let the numbness try and take away the disappointment of never being good enough-

Her phone vibrated, and she wearily hauled it out to hit 'delete' on the latest text from Cap without even looking… until she stopped and stared, his last message having caught her eye even though she'd tried not to read it.

Please, Visi. You can't be my first choice if you're not here.

"Give me the location." Visi heard her own voice saying.

"-and you've got to- what?" Robert's voice cut off.

"Location, dipshit!" Visi yelled. "Give me the spot on the perp so I can escort my foot to its date with his ass!"

"85th and Western. Jewelry store on the corner." Robert said proudly. "Go get 'em, Invisigal."

Visi rapidly thumbed out a reply to Cap on her phone. OK. Busy. Wish me luck.

Visi's motorcycle pulled up outside the jewelry store, and she swung down off the bike and made ready to go inside-

"I'd like to know where the bad guys are and what the terrain is like before we actually kick off." Cap's voice echoed in her memory.

"Hey. Mr. Overwatch." Visi murmured into her mike. "You got the cameras up yet? What do you see?"

"Jewelry store's all one big showroom floor in front, display cases are barely waist-high and made mostly out of glass. Two goons busy smashing open the cases and scooping shit into sacks, they've both got SMGs slung, Lightningstruck's waving his blaster cannons around while he keeps an eye out in all directions for incoming, and he's either on something or had way too much coffee because he's tweaking like crazy." Robert replied.

"Nobody out back or in front." Visi murmured as she finished a swift yet silent sweep around the outside. "Back door's locked, front door's got a hole smashed in the glass I could ride my bike through. Any cameras in the back room?"

"Yeah. Nobody hiding there this time." Robert replied.

"And thank God for that." Visi muttered. "What other systems you got access to there, hackerman?"

"Give me a moment…" Robert muttered. "HVAC. Sprinklers. Lights. Hmm, if his gear's not waterproof-"

"Oh fuck no." Visi said immediately. "The last time one of his blasters shorted out, it put the guy trying to shoot it in the hospital! You trying to burn down the store?"

"… and I'm actually ashamed of myself that I forgot that." Robert laughed at himself briefly. "You're right, not time to repeat our old mistakes. You're the hero on the spot, what are you thinking?"

"Thanks for the confidence, but I wish I was thinking anything." Visi muttered to herself. "Come on, Visi, what would he-?"

"From what I've seen today you seem to do fine until you either lose track on the target or something unplanned goes wrong... and then you get taken down because you don't have any defensive powers and being an invisible skirmisher working alone only succeeds as long as you don't use up your margin of error or your luck." Cap's voice echoed in her memory again.

"Margin of error…" Visi thought furiously. "Track on target… okay, I can smoke any one of these assholes easily if I can see them and they can't see me, but as soon as I go visible I get shot in the back twice…" Her eyes widened as an idea struck her. "Hey, Robert. Does your hook into the fire sprinklers include the fire alarms?"

"It can. Why?" he asked.

"I go invisible and sneak in the front. When I give you the signal, you pop the siren on the emergency fire door in the back– you know, the one that tells everybody that the door's been opened? Bad guy thinks either civvie hid out inside and is now trying to get away or else he thinks I'm coming in the back door, and what does he do?"

"He… either sends both of his goons to cover the entrance, or he goes himself while they stay on the loot. Either way, you've split them up." Robert realized. "But-"

"But I pick the same side of the door that the big guy is on, so I only have to get behind one target before it's lights out. And once he hits the ground, where his two mooks can't see him go down, they're just easy mop-up."

"I love it." Robert agreed immediately. "All right, let me get into the system…I'm ready. It's your move."

Invisigal took a deep breath and held it, then faded out and lightfooted as quietly as she could through the smashed-open front glass door and into the shop. She paused and crouched tensely as Lightningstruck swept by barely five feet in front of her, and while her fingers itched with the urge to just leap on his back right now and go for it she fought off the temptation. A few quick steps brought her behind the coat rack adjacent to the door, and she used the cover of it to go visible and take another deep breath before fading out again.

Next stretch. Get down the side of the door without being spotted and down behind the cash counter. She thought to herself and tensely crept forward. Stealth runs for her were always an exercise in instinct and nerve… the usual practice to go as slowly and carefully as one could, always exactly placing one's feet, didn't work for someone whose primary stealth power was limited by the duration of her breath-holding. So she'd learned how to walk quietly while still almost moving at a run, even if that meant that what for other people was cautious creeping was for her almost a parkour routine done on flat ground or a freestyle dance… and that while also conserving one's oxygen.

Lightningstruck's nervous tension or amphetamine rush made the entire exercise even more problematic, because he couldn't keep to a consistent patrol route. He'd randomly stop to harangue his mooks to move faster, whip his head around at imagined noises, or just get bored and start walking in a different direction. At one point Visi had to leap and roll silently onto the top of a display case to avoid being walked into, making a small muted thud that sounded as loud as a thunderclap in her ears. Fortunately, the noise of yet another glass case being smashed open covered her movement.

Crouched down behind the cash register, she stopped and went visible again, refreshing her oxygen for the last stretch. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a spare mouse and keyboard tucked away under the counter for the convenience of whoever was using the computer terminal, and with an eager grin reached out to pick up the neatly coiled mouse-and-cord. Few people stopped to appreciate that the humble USB cable used for computer mice was generally a four or five-strand braided copper wire inside plastic insulation, and as such had a higher tensile strength than paracord and made for an excellent improvised garrotte.

Visi remained invisible and crouching down a few feet to the side of the door into the back room, and tapped her microphone three times. Now.

The whoop-whoop-whoop of the emergency door open alarm startled everyone in the shop save Visi, and after a frantic moment of everyone looking around with drawn guns Lightningstruck bellowed "Stay here and keep shoveling! I'll check this out!"

The hulking cyborg thug swept less than an arm's length away from Visi as he kicked open the rear door and charged into the rear section of the store, both of his arm-mounted blaster cannons sparking furiously with their electrical charge. Ready to unleash devastation on a moment's notice, he let the door swing shut behind him as he stopped in the center of the room and furiously scanned around-

"Huh?" Lightningstruck blinked in surprise, staring at the still-closed emergency door.

And then his voice cut off as Invisigal materialized out of nowhere and leapt onto his back, the mouse cord entwined in both her hands. In one swift motion she looped it around his neck and pulled as hard as she could, supplementing the force of the pull with both of her knees pushing solidly off of his back. Lightningstruck gasped for air that wouldn't come, his vision going dark, as he couldn't even understand what the heck was happening to him- until his belated recognition of the female voice speaking softly into his ear finally told him, too late, exactly how he'd been tricked.

"Lights out, Thundercuck." Visi said triumphantly, and then grinned from ear to ear.

* * * * *

The sound of applause caught Visi entirely off guard as she frog-marched the captured Lightningstruck in through the front doors of the SDN branch. Normally a villain would be taken directly to jail, but as Royd's services would be needed to safely deactivate Lightningstruck's augments before he could be confined she'd brought him here instead. And while Visi had been expected to be met by the management crew and Cap, she certainly hadn't expected the entire Z-Team to be lined up and applauding.

"'Sup, Thundercuck." The low booming voice of Golem drawled amiably.

"Hey, bangle boy! Or more like bangle bitch!" Flambae sneered at him amusedly.

"Or bitch boy!" Prism laughed.

"Hey bangle bitch boy, fuck you!" Punch Up called out in rapid-fire patter.

Visi drew to a stop as the tall and imposing figure of Malevola looked impassively at her… before she nodded and stepped aside. "Sorry about, uh, tripping you earlier." she muttered softly.

Visi acknowledged the apology with a nod and kept going down the line of applauding people, feeling more and more self-conscious as she went along, until her nervous smile faded into a genuine grin at seeing Cap at the end of the line beaming back at her from ear to ear. Visi was desperately hoping that the blush she was starting to feel hadn't actually reached her cheeks.

"Uh, why are these assholes not being assholes?" Visi couldn't help but ask.

"Robert had a slight mistake with his headphones." Cap fought back a smirk of his own. "And accidentally pushed the button for broadcasting to the entire branch when he meant to use the individual channel."

"You mean everybody heard that?" Visi flinched, her eyes going wide.

"Yeah, we all heard your mission go textbook!" Sonar congratulated her.

"Silent Assassin, Suit Only." Golem said cheerfully.

"And not so much as a paint scratch on the walls." Coupe nodded. "Not even all of my jobs went that quietly. Congratulations."

"Uh, thanks. Which way's Royd?" Visi asked quickly. "I want to ditch this guy before my arm gets tired."

"Over here." The giant profile of SDN's tech genius greeted her, escorted by several security guards. "Yah, you lightning arms goan to have a date with my toolbox, aren't dey?" he taunted Lightningstruck as the villain was led away.

"All right, everyone." Robert said. "That's the good news." He continued more seriously. "The bad news will be delivered as soon as the final ranking calculation comes through in a couple of minutes. But before that, I just want to say… excellent second shift, all of you. Even if you're not fortunate enough to be working here tomorrow, you still have absolutely nothing to regret about how well you did today." He paused briefly and continued. "At least, after lunch."

"Congratulations, Visi." Cap said, as the breakup of the group finally meant they could catch a private moment off by the corner of the cubicle row. "And not just that last job, but all four of them." He gave a disarming grin. "You already know I don't entirely agree with their scoring system." He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, after pausing briefly enough that she could signal if it were unwelcome. "Even if it turns out to not be enough for some unfeeling corporate algorithm, it was still enough to be proud of."

"About earlier." Visi began awkwardly. "I- you were just trying to help. I shouldn't have cut you cold just for doing your job this morning. Of course you didn't cheat, you're you."

"Thank you." Cap said relievedly.

"And… thanks for the encouragement. With the texting." Visi continued softly. "Thank God the whole branch didn't hear those… but they really helped."

"I'm glad I could-" Cap began, only to be cut off by a smashing of glass as Coupe angrily came out of the man-sized hole that had just opened up in the glass panel adjacent to the conference room door and stormed furiously towards the exit.

"… I guess that answers that question." Cap continued.

"Yeah." Visi's breath exploded outward in a gasp of relief. "Pinch me, 'cause I'm still not sure it's real."

"Then let's go check the leaderboard." Cap suggested, and the two of them moved over to stand in front of the giant display panel and wait until the updated stats from the head office's computer finished being entered into the public display.

As soon as the display lights blinked out and then began to ripple into their new configuration, Cap looked away from the board and down at Visi. He exhaled heavily as Visi's lips curled up slightly… not into one of her usual confident or saucy grins, or even some hard-edged expression of triumph, but the first genuinely sweet smile he'd ever seen from her. The soft curve of her lips and the grateful widening of her eyes as she saw her name come off off the bottom of the leaderboard for the first time ever, now ensconced comfortably in third-to-last place… well, second, as Coupe's now last-place score had yet to be removed from the computer after her firing… made Cap's heart beat just a tiny bit faster, as he felt a surge of emotion he couldn't even identify. His heart warmed even further as Visi, entirely unselfconscious of her audience, reached into her pocket to pull out her smartphone and snap a picture of her achievement.

"Good night, Cap." Visi turned her face up to him, apparently still unaware of how she was smiling. "And, thanks." She nodded back at Cap's automatic nod of his head and headed cheerfully towards the door, stopping to give a slightly more awkward thank-you to both Robert and Chase as they stood discussing something near his cubicle.

The two men came over to where Cap was standing, and Cap barely caught the knowing glance they exchanged as they caught a good look at his face. Robert fought back a smile of his own and drew up to a position alongside Cap, carefully not looking at him as he also pretended to study the leaderboard.

"You know, I was recently assured by no less a source than our esteemed branch manager that the company's HR policy contains absolutely no prohibition against relationships between employees, just so long as the relationship is disclosed to their supervisor or branch manager." Robert opined, his tone of voice entirely mild and neutral.

"It's not like that." Steve immediately protested. "We're just friends."

"Uh-huh." Chase grumbled, shaking his head. "Seriously. Absolutely no fuckin' sense of self-preservation at all."

"Well, maybe so." Robert agreed tolerantly. "Good night, Captain. We'll see you tomorrow."

"Looking forward to it." Steve agreed wholeheartedly.

* * * * *

Author's Note: You're catching feelings, Cap. I wonder how long it will take for you to actually notice? *eg*

Yes, it's amusing that after I posted above about how chaotic Visi is, I start having mine actually trying to plan a step ahead or two. Cap's being a horrible influence on her, really. (Note still the degree of effort it took her to come up with a plan that intuitively simple, even if the details were still legitimately tight.)

Trying to let Robert keep his Captain America Speech moment even with Captain America himself actually in the room was a writing challenge. I settled for 'Robert notably expands on his canon remarks inspired at least somewhat by an observation Cap made' as a solution.

And yes, Golem is canonically a gamer, so the 'Hitman' reference was deliberate.

Visi's cute smile is at 2:06 in this video, and it really is the first time in the game you see her expression be genuinely sweet.

cliffc999 · Jan 1, 2026

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 9

"Can anyone tell me why Phenomaman is lying on top of a crushed car in the parking lot?" Captain America asked curiously as he entered the office.

"News story broke this morning. Blonde Blazer broke up with him. Famous superhero celebrity power couple no more." Invisigal said cheerfully from where she'd been propping up a nearby wall. "Morning, Cap."

"Good morning, Visi." Cap said. "So, he's hanging around depressed outside his now ex-girlfriend's workplace? Not a comforting thought for someone as powerful as he is-" Cap blinked in belated realization. "Um… they only broke up today?"

"No, no." Visi shook her head as she fell in alongside Cap as they walked down the hallway towards morning roll call. "The news broke today. Breakup happened a little while ago. I guess Phenomaman was holding it in until he had to watch it on the morning channels all over again and then he crashed out."

"Makes sense." Cap nodded. "And this also makes something else I overheard yesterday make sense. Specifically, Blonde Blazer apparently personally emphasizing to Robert that the HR policy didn't prohibit relationships between employees so long as the chain of command knew about it."

"Really?" Visi raised her eyebrows inquiringly. "Huh, wow, she's rebounding fast if so. Still, Robert is kinda cute. In, y'know, that ex-superhero skinny dad bod kinda way."

"'Dad bod'?" Cap asked worriedly, deciding to tackle the least disturbing part of that statement first.

"Y'know, dad bod?" Visi looked at him askance. "Like… the physique the average suburban guy has? Not fat, but not athletic, because he works in an office?" Her expression softened. "Or did you not have a dad?"

"He died in a mustard gas attack, almost at the end of World War I." Cap acknowledged soberly. "My mother had gotten pregnant right before he deployed. He was gone before I was born."

"… I'd been more thinking 'They grew you in a cloning tank and you didn't know what family was' type tragedy, not war orphan tragedy." Visi replied pensively. "But that other one sucks even harder."

"And you?" Cap asked as gently as possible, thinking he'd heard something in Visi's tone of voice when she'd said the word 'orphan'.

"Oh look, we're here! At the meeting!" she answered brightly. "Are we… still doing the pretending we're not friends thing so the team isn't jerks about it?" she continued more diffidently.

"No." Cap decided immediately. "Sonar overheard us talking Friday, and if nobody noticed anything yesterday evening then the whole team needs eye exams. Plus, if the in-house fragging doesn't stop after yesterday then this team has much bigger problems."

"Still won't stop them from teasing the life out of us about it." Visi warned, and the conference room door opened and the two of them entered walking side-by-side. Prism took one look at the duo and immediately held out her empty hand palm up towards Flambae, who dug a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet and slapped it into her hand with a frustrated growl. Punch Up gave a disgruntled snort, and everybody else reacted with either mild amusement or disinterest.

"Definitely not eye exams." Visi snarked mildly at the by-play, and the two of them took their seats.

"Good morning, everyone." Robert greeted them a minute later. "I asked for this morning roll call instead of just starting the shift out with a round of calls because I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about the new training program. As I mentioned yesterday, there was quite a bit that you were supposed to have been being taught and never was, so now we have to play catch-up. We've condensed the most essential bits into a new series of condensed courses that you'll be rotated through one or two at a time, for an hour or two a day, for the next few weeks. You won't need to take any overtime. The rest we'll handle at our leisure, and the most useless parts we'll just ignore. I've got everybody's new training schedule."

"I want my twenty back, because it's saying that the corpo shill and the teacher's pet are now study buddies." Flambae drawled to Prism.

"I'll take that!" Prism said. "No way they'd be that obvious."

Cap and Visi both immediately looked at their training schedules, to the chuckles of quite a few other people in the room.

"I have… two of my classes with Invisigal, and a lot more than two classes with other people." Cap said quickly, and handed over his schedule to Flambae and Prism for proof. "I don't know how you'd score that."

"… call it I'm half right and you're half right, and I slide back ten bucks?" Prism shrugged, and Flambae nodded.

"Damn, that just burns me up." Flambae said sarcastically, as he ignited his flame powers everywhere but the hand that was still holding Cap's training schedule. "Let's hope I don't lose control…" His expression fell. "You didn't even blink, Captain. I thought I'd get you that time! But okay, at least you got some stones."

Cap just held out his hand politely, and Flambae put his training schedule back in it unharmed.

"And now that the important items on the agenda are finished." Robert drawled with tolerant amusement. "Next up is…"

"Teacher's pet!" Visi fumed as her and Cap headed out the doors to the parking lot. "I'm the teacher's pet now? What kind of bizarro world bullshit is that?"

"I'm so happy that you rushed to console me over the intolerable agony I felt at the accusation of being a corporate shill." Cap teased Visi back.

"How does somebody with such an altar boy face have such a sassy mouth?" Visi snorted. "But seriously, teacher's pet?"

"Take it as a compliment." Cap suggested. "Because the teacher can have two reasons for spending extra time with a particular student, and the second reason is if they think they're gifted."

"If I was ever someone's gift, then they returned it." Visi said with a flash of bitterness, before she relaxed again and swung a leg over her motorcycle. "Well, time to get moving. I'll catch you at lunch if we don't get a call together before then. You know where the place is, right?"

"Contrary to popular belief I actually know how to use GPS. And I'm looking forward to it." Cap smiled back.

"Well hey, at the rate you burn calories somebody needs to show you what diners around here are the real diamonds in the rough or else you'll go broke paying for overpriced trash. Later, Cap!" She revved up her engine and peeled out, and Cap went to his own motorcycle to do the same.

* * * * *

"This place is amazing." Cap said as him and Visi sat together in the little snack shop they were eating lunch together in. It was a small place with barely a dozen seats at the counter and only a few tables, but the open grill wafted delicious smells all throughout the corner nook as the short-order cook gladly served Cap a double-sized stack of pancakes drowning in butter and real maple syrup.

"Family-owned places are always the best." Visi agreed as she dug into her own cheeseburger. "And they've not only got portions in heart-attack size but they run the breakfast menu all day and they have an evening staff for second-shift workers. Back when I was working nights, this place was one of the few spots that saved me from living off of McDonald's."

"You don't cook?" Cap asked.

"Never really learned." Visi said briefly. "What about you? Nothing but mess halls?"

"I can cook." Cap answered. "Home cooking, at least. Nothing fancy."

"Beats living out of the microwave." Visi agreed. "So, how's the pancakes?"

"I may just ask them to put a little bronze plaque over my seat so I can reserve it permanently." Cap grinned back at her. "The last time I had any this good was this little neighborhood place in Brooklyn near where I grew up, all the way back when I grew up."

"And that thought makes you smile?" Visi looked at him curiously, and then sympathetically. "I mean… wormhole. One-way trip." She exhaled heavily. "I've been trying not to step on any emotional landmines of yours, but I just can't seem to figure out where they are."

"I'm not saying they don't exist, but they're not there." Steve said soberly. "Back home…" He stopped and thought intensely. "Home, to me, still feels like not only where I grew up but when I grew up. The life that I had back before I went into the ice. And I'd already lost all ties to that life but one before I even hit the wormhole. The modern-day of my homeworld… I hadn't even been it for two years before I ended up on another one-way trip to here. And yes, I had co-workers, partners, even some friends. But no family. No old neighborhood. Nobody… special."

He stopped and looked thoughtfully down into his glass of soda, before looking back up at Visi. "The psychiatrists at SHIELD, as well as Agent Romanov – the partner that I spent the most time working with - kept telling me that I needed to put down new roots in my new era. To anchor myself in the present as deeply as I had been in the past. And you just don't do that kind of thing overnight, and I hadn't even begun to finish the process there before I ended up here. So I suppose that back there in my original timeline's modern era wasn't ever a home for me to lose. It was just a place, that I'd lived in for a couple of years before moving on to another place. Maybe that's why it wasn't anywhere near as big of a shock when I lost it too."

"I don't know whether that's some of the saddest shit I've ever heard or a mercy in disguise." Visi shook her head musingly.

"Well, since it's keeping me from feeling anywhere near as awful living here as I was feeling right after I'd come out of the ice, I'm going to go with mercy." Cap nodded. "Really, right after I realized I was stuck here and this wasn't just a temporary condition, I was expecting to feel much worse than this." Cap smiled at her. "And while I've only been here a little over a week, this is still… nice." He exhaled heavily. "I'd been over a year out of the ice in the other place before I even began to feel this relaxed."

"Whoa, too much somber too early in the day." Visi immediately waved a dismissive hand, before the briefest flash of her cute little smile was visible again. "But yeah, it's nice that... it's being nice." She exhaled heavily and desperately cast around for a new topic. "Sooooo, our boss and our bigger boss. What do you think's going on there, and what do you think about what you think's going on there?"

"Well first off, it's entirely possible that we're reading into nothing." Cap admitted as he gratefully took the life-line Visi was throwing. "But if we're not, then I think they're both very lucky people to have each other."

"I was more asking, in the politest way possible, if you think there might have been something going on between those two before she broke up with her now ex-boyfriend." Visi continued.

Cap exhaled heavily as the timing of Blazer and Robert's original not-a-date at Crypto Night came irresistibly to mind, as well as the mistaken kiss that Robert had confessed to. "I'm not sure I even want to guess-"

"That's kinda an answer to my question." Visi broke in.

"No, I mean it." Cap protested. "But unless she is by far the greatest actress I have ever seen, which considering some people I've known would be saying something, I really don't think she has that kind of double-dealing nature."

"I notice that you're not saying anything about him not having it in in his nature." Vivi pounced.

"In a hypothetical adultery scenario, since we're starting from the assumption that the lady lied to her current partner then it's likely she didn't even tell her new partner that she had a current partner." Cap pointed out.

"Valid." Visi acknowledged. "But yeah, she doesn't seem the type for that kind of skankiness at all. Which means there's a 'Yes, but-' somewhere in what you're saying?"

"Yes, but it's possible that her current relationship was already in trouble, or emotionally unfulfilling, or suchlike, but she was sticking with it anyway either trying to make it work or afraid of change… until she met someone new, felt an immediate attraction to them, may even have regretfully acted on or invited such attraction on impulse, and only then had that clue them into the realization that their current relationship needed to come to an end." Cap conceded.

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking too." Visi mused. "That her life was like, all glitz and glamour and glitter and shit, and she thought that was all there was, until she met a guy who was actually for real and solid all the way through and realized what she'd been missing all along. So there was, like, some impulsive kiss or something, and she guilts about that, until she finally decides to go with what she really wants. So out with the glamor-boy and move on to the man with grease on his hands."

"That sounds very much like the plot of a romantic comedy." Cap realized.

"It does?" Visi denied unconvincingly. "Huh, what a coincidence." She snapped her fingers. "And I've been trying to remember all morning something that I wanted to ask, and I just did. Flaming jerk-boy. You handed him your class schedule just like that. You weren't afraid he'd 'accidentally' burn it up?"

"I have total recall." Cap explained. "So I'd already memorized it before I handed it to him."

"Jeez, is there any part of your genetics they didn't optimize?" Visi asked teasingly as she deliberately flicked her eyes down to where Cap's... waistline... would have been visible were it not blocked from her line of sight by the table top.

"Sometimes I think they missed the part that controls common sense." Cap replied lightly as he fought not to blush, and they both laughed.

"Okay, lunch is about over, so just one more question. Agent Romanov? That sounds like some guy who'd be played by Dolph Lundgren in the movie. So was this SHIELD place multinational, or was he some kind of defector?" Visi probed.

"She." Cap corrected her. "And she was a defector. And as it happens, she was also the person I was referring to when I originally talked to you about tactical synergy because her basic combat style was the same as yours. Stealth, misdirection, then speed and shock. She was a little shorter then you, but about the same muscle mass."

"Huh, no wonder we clicked so well in fights. You'd already practiced the combos. She have powers too?" Visi asked curiously.

"No, just a lot of practice." Cap looked down. "She had a little in common with Coupe as well, if you can imagine that. Mostly in how early her training had started – even earlier in her case - and what kind of training it had been."

"If she had Coupe's kind of early training then her job in this spook show must have been assassin." Visi concluded. "Which if you were her regular partner… uh, exactly what kind of work were you doing?" she asked diffidently.

"Largely counter-terrorism." Cap acknowledged ruefully. "The kind that you didn't do domestically, or with search warrants and judges." He shook his head. "I'm actually a little confused. From my skimming so far history here is the same outline as on my home timeline… same countries, same major historical dates, same names. There's a few differences, but most of them trace to individual events and people unique to my timeline, several of whom I've actually met. But despite all the similarity the international tensions here are so much lower. It sometimes felt like SHIELD was rushing around trying to stop a potential nuclear terrorist this or an international destabilization that practically every week. Here, the worst you've got are those occasional kaiju attacks and they've practically become routine work for superhero teams. I can't figure out why things are so different here."

"Neither can I, but what you mentioned might be another reason why you feel so comparatively relaxed here." Visi said wisely. "You're carrying way less of a workload."

"That's certainly true." Cap agreed. "And speaking of workload…"

"Lunch break's over." Visi agreed, as they stood up and headed to the cash register.

* * * * *

"Stop hidin' behind that shield and fight me like a man!" Punch Up roared in this thick brogue.

"Why are we even doing this?" Cap asked exasperatedly.

"If it weren't for your meddlin', then Coupe wouldn't have gotten cut!" Punch Up roared. "And since I can't exactly go downtown and punch the shite out of some feckin' suit what owns the whole company that's keepin' me out of jail, then who's left for me to take it out on 'cept the one man in our office whose actions actually made a difference?" Cap and Punch Up had both gotten a call to go calm down an incipient barfight at Crypto Night – again – and Punch Up had at least helped settle the call first before throwing hands in the alley out back.

"Okay, I'm actually glad you're acknowledging that Blazer and Robert had no choice in the matter." Cap nodded respectfully. "That having been said, if you wanted Coupe to beat out Visi for the cut then maybe you should have concentrated less on hoping that my friend failed and instead helped your friend succeed."

"You arrogant son of a-!" the three-and-a-half-foot tall fighting Irishman roared, coming in low and cocking his fist for a strike directly upwards into Captain America's groin… that fell short when Cap's foot flicked out with precise timing to catch Punch Up just as he stepped into kicking range, but not soon enough for him to have time to react. The kick sent Punch Up stumbling back.

"GODDAMN YOU-" Punch Up roared furiously, circling left and trying a low attack again. Cap easily countered it again, this time with a sweeping leg parry. He took a quick step to close in and threw an elbow strike to the top of Punch Up's bald head, sending the diminutive strongman stumbling again.

"Rrarrrrgh!" he shouted, grabbing the nearby dumpster and throwing it end over end at Cap. Cap rapidly knelt on the ground to brace himself, raised the shield with both arms, and deliberately let the dumpster rebound off the vibranium shield. Aided by his sudden shove upwards just as the dumpster impacted, he sent it bouncing back through the air to land directly on top of Punch Up's head.

"I can do this all day." Cap said testily. "Or I can buy you a drink and let you vent by ranting at me over a glass instead."

Punch Up kicked the dumpster off of him, sending it tumbling to land unsteadily over roughly where it had originally been, and grumbled like a hibernating bear. "And isn't that just the dirtiest maneuver you've pulled on me this whole damn fight, knowin' full well no proper Irishman can turn down an offer by the other fellow to pay for a pint and apologize." He snorted. "Bastard."

"Oh you're not getting an apology." Cap shook his head firmly. "I did my best to help Visi, and you didn't do enough to help Coupe when it counted, and that's on you. And if you want to dispute that, we can go right back to fists."

"You're right." Punch Up exhaled regretfully. "We got too cocky and thought we had it in the bag, so we didn't put in the work that we should. And when we started feelin' the contest get close then we thought dirty tricks and nothin' else could let us get a win. But any fighter knows that's just beggin' to get your teeth pounded in, livin' that way." His shoulders slumped. "Still sucks shite, though. I know she was all cold and stiff to all of you, that she never let on like this was a job she cared about. But that was just her way of presentin'. The lady on the inside wasn't the face she showed the outside, that's just how some people are."

"Yes, it is." Cap agreed soberly, thinking of Natasha. "Maybe she shouldn't have been cut. But Visi shouldn't have been either. Really, no one should have."

"So you already said at the time." Punch Up agreed manfully. "And that wasn't a lie. All right, let's go get that drink."

"Normally I'd say we should clean up the mess we made first… but honestly? The bartender here is rude enough my conscience is clear letting him clean it all up himself. The dumpster's back in place, so he can pick up his trash himself. You should hear what he says about some other customers behind their backs." Cap said disapprovingly.

"Pfft, not surprised at all to hear that he's that sort. " Punch Up snorted. "No proper man with a proper spine would need to call in help this often to keep control in his own bar."

"Well if you only drink for the taste and don't want the super-concentrated stuff to get drunk on, then we don't have to drink here." Cap suggested. "Let's just go find a bottle somewhere and get our own glasses, and we can share it."

"Eh, I'm wise to your tricks, you shifty shifty man." Punch Up grinned. "You just want me to tell you where the good liquor store is-" And then he savagely lashed out without the slightest tensing of a muscle to betray his intention, and even Cap's superhuman reflexes were barely sufficient to let him move enough to take the blow on his inner thigh instead of where it had actually been aimed.

"Agh!" Cap limped painfully, immediately bringing up both of his hands – his shield had been re-slung upon his back – to parry Punch Up's next blow, only to be met with a grin and empty upraised hands instead. "What the hell?"

"The man finally cusses, like a proper man should!" Punch Up said gleefully. "And never in my entire life have I gotten in a dust-up without at least getting one piece of the other fellow before it was over, and I wasn't breakin' that streak now for any money." he continued proudly. "But blood's been drawn on both sides, honor's been satisfied, so now we can go get that drink."

Cap raised one finger frustratedly, before he finally lowered it with a pained smile. "You're just lucky you're not the first Irishman I've served with." he finally said as the two of them walked off together.

"Galway born and bred." Punch Up said proudly. "And don't try to fool me. Ye might not have a trace of the brogue, but there's no way a man what understands properly like you without even bein' told doesn't have at least some of the blood."

"On both sides." Cap admitted. "I was the first generation born on this side of the water. Grew up in a neighborhood where at least half the neighbors were fresh from Ellis Island, just like my folks had been."

"Hah! I knew there was somethin' I liked about yah!" Punch Up laughed, before his manner turned somber. "To tell the truth, I'm just a bit worried about Coupe. She's not gone back to jail, she'd gotten enough credit for time served to keep her probation provided she finds another honest job within the month, but she's just not answerin' her phone. Won't answer me texts either. And I went by her place, but she wasn't there."

"That's not good." Cap agreed. "I'd been hoping that even after she was cut she'd still draw support from her friends."

"Friend." Punch Up corrected. "She wasn't really that close to anyone else on the team. But her and I used to be lovers before we decided to still be friendly, and now-" He shook his head. "If she's gone dark like this then I'm afraid it means that the people she was runnin' from, that she used to work for, might be catchin' up to her. Or that she might be afraid that they are, even if they're not." He muttered. "Hope they're not, anyway."

"If she's legitimately in danger then it doesn't matter if she's an ex-employee, I'm sure Robert will still care anyway. Can you write down everything you know about these people, so we can make sure he gets it?" Cap said.

"You really think he'd give a shite?" Punch Up said wonderingly. "Just because I acknowledge it wasn't his idea doesn't mean I've got the slightest faith that he thought it was a bad idea. And I saw him give her the cut without blinkin' an eye."

"If he showed a single sign of weakness in front of the team, what do you think would happen?" Cap replied. "He's more than experienced enough to know that, and so you only see the face he lets you. What did you just say about some people being that way?"

"Got a point there, I suppose." Punch Up shrugged. "Well, why not. Worst thing that happens is he just uses the paper for arsewipe, at which point shite's no further behind than I already was."

"So, you and our lass Visi." Punch Up asked somewhere around the second glass. Cap and Punch Up had both waited until after work and going off shift before meeting back up as agreed to share that bottle. Neither man was anything but sober, of course, as they both had nigh-invulnerable constitutions, but it was still a good and mellow night to be sitting outside and sharing a friendly drink.

"We're just friends." Cap protested.

"Course you haven't gone farther yet, you've barely known each other a few days." Punch Up said wisely. "But even your just bein' friends with her…" He shook his head wonderingly. "The whole time she's been on the team, Visi's just been the most bitter lass I've ever seen. Always sittin' with her back to the wall or makin' sure she had the drop on you, never actually relaxin' unless she were far enough out of reach. Every word either a jest or a barb, every smile just a mask. Never lettin' herself actually say what she was feelin'." He took another long sip.

"I knew someone like that before." Cap agreed. "Or rather, I knew someone who had been like that, but was only still partly that way by the time I'd first met her. But that was because she'd already met at least one other person she could trust, someone who'd still gone way out on a limb for her when it would have been far easier to make the other call. I don't think Visi ever had anyone like that in her life."

"I very much doubt it." Punch Up agreed. "Not until you came along." He took a deep breath. "So what I suppose what I'm tryin' to say, Captain, is don't fuck it up. Because a person only gets that way after life has kicked the everlivin' shite out of them. And I don't mean the way you and I just did, I mean the way that's just pickin' on those what can't fight you back and then puttin' the boots into 'em good and hard after they're down. A person lives like that long enough, they get like feral cats. Afraid of even those just tryin' to reach out and give the poor thing a little love. So whether or not she's the one for you in the end, or whether or not you go the distance, or whatever the hell, well, that's up to the two of you. But no matter what, you can't… let her down." He trailed off sadly. "I did that once and even with everything I could do to patch it up, it was never entirely good between us again. Be a sin and a shame to see history repeat itself. Best wishes, Captain."

"Thank you." Cap said simply, and topped off Punch Up's glass with the last of the bottle. "I'll do my best."

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 10

The champagne cork popped and the expensive champagne bubbled forth, and Steve politely held out his glass to let the sommelier pour it.

"On the house, Captain Rogers." the tuxedo-clad man said. "And with the compliments of the Stork Club."

"Thank you." Steve smiled back at the man and stepped away from the table and began looking around for his date, sipping the glass. The band was playing, the room was full of people laughing and celebrating the end of the war and the defeat of the Axis, and the tall handsome blond man dressed neatly in his class A's smiled – not his PR or his War Bond Tour smile, but a genuinely wide, beaming grin – at several of the men he'd served with. Even Gabriel Jones and Jim Morita were being made welcome here tonight without any rancor, when normally Gabe's skin color and Jim's race would have seen them barred at the door.

"Captain!" James Dugan yelled boisterously at him from a table where he sat with his wife. "Come on over, let me introduce ya to the missus!"

"Ma'am." Steve greeted her, and he traded pleasantries with his first sergeant and his beautiful wife for a minute before moving on with a knowing laugh and a backslap from Dugan. The Howling Commandoes were the finest men Steve Rogers had ever served with, and he was honestly happy that except for poor Bucky they could all be here celebrating their unit's return to the States after V-E Day, but he was still eager to make his date-

"Hey, pal!" Howard Stark came bustling over, his grin as wide as the doors on an aircraft hangar. "Here, give me that." He took the almost-empty champagne glass from Steve's hands. "You'll want your hands free for this!"

"Thank you for arranging all of this, Howard." Steve said earnestly. "Lord knows it would never have fit on the Army's dime, let alone mine."

"Ah, it's just money." Howard waved it off. "It's not important. And I'm sorry we got held up, but last I saw she was just powdering her nose. She'll be along in a minute."

"Thank God." Steve breathed out in relief. "I swear to God, if I'd had to take just one more rain check then I'd have lost my mind."

"It's been a long bumpy road to get here, hasn't it?" Howard agreed. "Been a lot of unplanned detours on the way. But all good things come to those who wait… and hey, there she is!" Howard pointed at the brown-haired woman visible in the distance with her back to them as she drifted around the room searching for Steve, her trim and athletic body looking even more beautiful than usual in her elegant blue dress glittering with brilliant sequins. Seeing the rough-and-tumble scrapper who'd originally won his heart with how unlike a 'proper and conventional' woman she'd been all dolled up in the finest formalwear that Stark's fortune could buy should have been a jarring experience, but somehow it all looked and felt so perfectly right-

"Excuse me, ma'am." Steve said joyfully as he came up behind her. "But I believe you promised me a dance?"

The woman turned around, her adorably sweet little smile sending a lance of happiness into Steve's heart like it always had. "Damn right I did." Invisigal said lovingly.

Steve Roger's eyes snapped awake as he lay there on the bed in his new apartment, his alarm clock beeping mercilessly at him from the bedside table. His breath caught in his throat as he tried to shake off his confusion. For a long instant he didn't know where he was, or why he was no longer in the New York of 1945, or why his promised dance in the Stork Club hadn't been with Peggy- and then his eyes opened wide as horrified realization finally crashed in on him.

"Oh my God."

* * * * *

Author's Note: Oh, you thought I was going to give Visi the dream sequence? The one from canon? Well… actually, I was originally going to do that. And then my fingers just started running away with me and somehow this happened instead.

Also, yes, that is indeed a flag-themed blue dress with white sequin stars on it that Dream Invisigal is wearing. Finally worked in the title drop!

Subtle, this was not. But Steve's subconscious apparently decided that the dense motherfucker would never get the message if it wasn't hammered in with a nuclear earth penetrator, and so, he gets that dream.

Story-wise, the timescale of 'Dispatch' gets hinky in the middle game. It's canonical that the game occurs over a period of 'several months' (reference from Robert's speech to the group in episode 7, if you choose the 'Don't Cut Visi' option), but each episode seems to transition tightly from one day to the next. The general assumption is that there's a timeskip or two somewhere in the middle episodes, but nobody can agree on exactly where. So up until now I've had a firm in-game calendar to follow, but from this point the day counter will just wing it as time progresses because the canon timeline is uncertain.

The 'other person Steve knew who'd been that way' is Natasha, of course. Nat's trust issues used to make Fury's look tame, it's just that Clint had already helped fix most of those before Steve was even out of the ice.

The reason international tensions are so much higher in the MCU is because of HYDRA. Zola even explained in TWS that "For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war.", all to make the world so desperate for security that it would sacrifice its freedom. It's not so much that Earth-Dispatch is unrealistically super peaceful as it is that Earth-MCU has been on the brink for a lot longer than anyone there has consciously realized.

As for the rest of this little slice-of-life chapter, again, I have no idea where it all came from. I don't even know how Punch Up even got there! But hey, I think it works, so I'll keep it.

cliffc999 · Jan 1, 2026

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 10

"What are you doing, Steve?" he moaned into his bathroom mirror. "I'm- okay, obviously I'm attracted. My dream would never have swapped her in for Peggy if I didn't like like her, but-"

Steve's mumbled soliloquy continued without pause as he efficiently shaved, showered, dressed, and headed out. Normally he cooked his own breakfast, but given how distracted he was this morning Steve had decided it would be a good idea to simply let someone else be handling hot grease and kitchen implements today and so he'd stopped at a diner on the way to work. It wasn't until his order was being placed in front of him by the smiling waitress that Steve consciously caught up to the fact that he was sitting in the same booth that he'd shared with Visi yesterday, in the very same diner, and he groaned and buried his head in his hands.

Cap managed to avoid talking to himself like a crazy person while he hurriedly ate his breakfast and then started the drive to work, but as soon as he was alone on his motorcycle the pressure of his thoughts boiled over again. His not-so-internal monologue continued all the way into the parking lot.

"-it makes sense on some level, I suppose. I don't have all the pressure of SHIELD's constant op tempo anymore. I must have been a coiled spring that just had the pressure taken off. So my feelings would be running a little out of control under those kinds of circumstances. And she's a feisty brunette with a good left hook who's been struggling with things like vulnerability and trauma while trying to make up for a past she regrets… God, it's like somebody did a composite of Peggy and Natasha." Cap was still muttering to himself as he pulled into the parking spot and got off his motorcycle. "But I still don't have the slightest reason to assume that she likes me that way, and the last thing she needs right now is to be pressured into anything she might not want. So… don't push her away, but don't try to read anything into it. Don't pull a Robert and try grabbing and kissing her because you're imagining a signal that's not there. Just stay her friend. Just act normal." Cap took several deep breaths, getting his 'work face' straight with an effort, before squaring his shoulders and walking into SDN. Just another normal shift on another normal day.

Cap felt a small twinge of guilt at his relief that Visi wasn't doing her 'I wasn't waiting for you, I just happened to be standing in the lobby for a while before you arrived at work' thing today, so he didn't have to face a stress test of his new 'act normal' initiative first thing in the door.

Act normal! Steve reminded himself as he headed towards the conference room for roll call, until the sounds of an argument in the break room drew his attention. He turned his head to see what was going on, and his body went taut at the first glimpse of Flambae, his fist wreathed in flame, angrily waving that fist directly in the face of an upset Visi.

* * * * *

"So you thought she was in danger, and you reacted." Robert said flatly, his arms crossed as he leaned on the conference room wall.

"Yes." Cap said guiltily.

"By spinning him around and punching him into the wall so hard that we've still got a Flambae-shaped divot in the break room."

"… yes." Cap's shoulders slumped.

"Did you even know he had superhuman resilience?" Robert narrowed his eyes.

"Actually, yes." Cap nodded. "Or else I'd have scaled down the punch. I wasn't trying to kill him, I was just trying to cold-cock him."

"You certainly managed that." Robert relaxed. "And yeah, it definitely means a lot that you still had enough self-control to pick your damage setting. But you still overreacted, and I've still got to rack you for it. You helped me write the new training module for the usage-of-force escalation chart, so you of all people should not have taken a swing without at least giving Flambae a verbal challenge before using force."

"You're right. I was out of line." Cap exhaled. "I'm sorry. He just rubs me the wrong way, but I shouldn't have brought it into the workplace."

"Was that the reason?" Robert looked at him knowingly. "You just didn't like him?"

"… and it was Visi." Cap reluctantly admitted. "I felt… protective."

"You do know she was actually guilty of what Flambae was yelling at her for, right? Vanishing his brown bag in the refrigerator as a prank would annoy me too, if it were my brown bag. Now granted that he certainly shouldn't punctuated his objections with his fist, particularly not when it's on fire-" Robert began.

"Does he even know he's doing the equivalent of threatening someone at gunpoint everytime he does that?" Cap said vehemently. "It's deliberately brandishing a lethal weapon with intent to threaten harm. That's still aggravated assault even if he doesn't touch anyone."

"I doubt he's bothered to educate himself on the legalities." Robert rolled his eyes. "So yes, I will speak to him about that… when it's his turn. Right now it's your turn."

"Right." Cap braced himself back to the position of attention. "I did it, I'll accept the punishment."

"Barring emergency necessity, you don't get any more joint calls with Visi." Robert said immediately and Cap winced. "Hey. Take breaks together, go to lunch together, hang out after work, whatever you want. But you just admitted that your tactical judgement occasionally slips a little when she's involved, and that means no more field partnerships until further notice." He looked at Cap. "This is exactly why the HR policy about relationships is what it is, so that the management staff knows what's going on whenever things start to slip a little and we can fix it using the minimum necessary adjustment instead of not knowing what's wrong until there's a huge blowup that needs a more drastic fix."

"We're not in a relationship. We're just friends." Cap protested.

"You can't deny that you've caught feels, Cap." Robert shook his head. "It looks pretty obvious to me."

"Damn." Cap swore. "If it's obvious to you, it'll be obvious to her."

"Am I missing something?" Robert looked at Cap confusedly. "I mean, I'm not God's gift to women but I like to think I at least know the basics, and I really doubt you'd get rejected if you asked. She's more comfortable around you than she's been around anyone else here."

"And that's exactly why I don't want to press for more." Cap said. "Even by implication. She needs to finally have a friend she can trust much more than I need to have a new girlfriend."

"Really not seeing how those two things contradict each other." Robert shook his head. "But okay, it's your lives." He stopped and remembered something. "Oh yeah, and your pay's being docked to repair the wall."

"Fair enough." Cap acknowledged. "Anything else, sir?"

"Dismissed." Robert said with an encouraging smile. "Send in the hothead on your way out. And… good luck."

Cap wasn't sure whether to feel upset or relieved that Visi had already headed out on her shift by the time he got out of the office, and with a resigned sigh he mounted his motorcycle and headed out. His morning shift went otherwise without incident – Robert had made sure to give him and Flambae assignments spaced as far apart as possible, as much as the call volume had allowed – and soon enough it was time for lunch.

"How's the spaghetti?" Visi was giving him a medium-cocky grin as Cap took his first bite of the house special at the place she was recommending to him today.

"I could smell the extra garlic before she brought it to the table, Visi." Cap smiled back at her. "Fortunately for you, I like garlic."

"Next time, Gadget! Next time!" she portentously orated like a cartoon supervillain and then chuckled.

"And speaking of pranking-" Cap began slowly.

"I literally just turned the bag around and moved it to the other corner. I didn't even take it out of the fridge. It's why Robert didn't bust me. I didn't actually break any rules." Visi eye-rolled. "And then Flambae crashed out entirely just because he didn't see his brown bag right away, how is that my fault?"

"Sorry. The version I'd heard made it sound like you'd tossed it out. I should have known better." Cap said guiltily. "But even if the justice of the situation isn't against you, is it smart to keep throwing gasoline on an open flame like that?"

"If was a 'do the smart thing' person I wouldn't be in the Phoenix Program." Visi grumped. "… oh God, that look. It's like someone just strangled your puppy or something. Please stop that look, you're making me feel guilty even for crimes I haven't committed." She facepalmed. "Did you get enough sleep last night, Cap? You've been jittery all morning." She paused and continued more seriously. "As if the part where you slammed a guy almost through the wall wasn't a clue."

"…I could have slept better." Cap gratefully seized on the exit line.

"Did you get in trouble for punching him?" she asked after several minutes of both of them concentrating on their food.

"I am being punished by not being allowed to have joint assignments with you until further notice." Cap explained.

"Yeowtch." Visi winced. "Okay, maybe I should tone down the goofing around the office a little. Ordinary busts are one thing, but when the new supervisor wants to get creative about making sure people don't want to get called into the office more than once-" She laughed slightly. "I guess that's why they special-hired him to be the hardass who had to whip this misfit squad into shape. Kinda like Major Payne, he'll do ironic punishment to scare us straight."

"Major who?" Cap asked. "Is that a superhero?"

Visi laughed until she snorted. "It's a movie, you goof! Guy who spent his entire life in the Army doing all the super-tough missions and never having a life ends up finally hitting retirement age and so they won't send him out anymore, so he ends up as the new instructor at this military school for kids and it spends the next ninety minutes playing it up for laughs." she cheerfully rambled on, oblivious to Cap's expression. "But eventually he bonds with the screw-ups around him and learns to appreciate his new life, even if it's nowhere near as intense or important as his old one was."

Cap sat there frozen, making a titanic effort not to show any reaction on his face at all as he tried to process why on Earth what Visi had just rambled about would even make him feel like he needed to process anything, while steadfastly ignoring the analogies that could be drawn between what she'd just said and his own situation.

"911. Barricaded hostage stand-off." Robert's voice came from Visi's communicator as he punched the command override. "SWAT's stuck outside the building, they can't make any moves because they have no idea what room the asshole's in or what he might have stacked in front of the doors. Lunch break's over, Visi, they need you to scout for 'em."

Visi and Cap both stood up immediately, before he remembered with a guilty flinch that Robert had only called one of them and he was currently forbidden to do ride-alongs without specific permission. He slowly, reluctantly sat back down.

"Can you settle up for me here, Cap?" Visi asked him, and Cap nodded. "Thanks. Got to go!" She grabbed her coat and headed out without a backward glance.

"So that's what it feels like." Cap reflected sadly, as he watched his superhero friend head out into the fight while he stayed safely behind. He dutifully finished his now-tasteless lunch, paid the check, and left.

* * * * *

"Finally." Flambae said icily as he confronted Steve. The man had actually followed him home from SDN, although Steve had readily noticed the flying man trying to discreetly tail him and had simply pulled off into the nearest large parking lot and waited for him to swoop down. "I've been trying to catch up with you all day!"

"I apologize for overreacting." Cap said stolidly. "I should not have leapt to the worst possible assumption."

"Yes, that is precisely what we are going to talk about, flag-man." Flambae hissed as he drew nearer. "Because I want you to understand me very clearly when I say-"

"I don't care what you say." Cap felt the last of his patience snap. "What, are you going to set my stuff on fire? Hurt me? Kill me? Over petty pride? As if that would change anything? You're nothing but a bully! An ordinary, petty bully, just one with more power to abuse than he should ever have had been given!"

"FUCK YOU!" Flambae screamed, immediately firing a full-strength flame blast that would have incinerated a normal person on the spot. Cap easily blocked it with the shield, then charged forward and knocked Flambae sprawling with a shield bash. The man flew back ten feet and hit the ground rolling, but immediately rolled to his feet with more agility than Cap had expected and took to the air again.

"It is long past time someone put your arrogant ass down!" Flambae raged as he swooped and soared, firing blast after blast towards the ground-bound Captain. Cap weaved through the barrage, cartwheeling over one blast and slipping under another, parrying a third with his shield, and leading him away from the store and towards the emptier corner of the lot.

"I have the mobility, fool! I have the high ground! I command the flame, and my skin does not-!" Flambae ranted as Cap was pressed hard but gave no ground. However, the slight pause Flambae took to monologue was just the opening Cap needed, and he threw his shield in a hard, slightly arcing toss-

-that soared several feet wide of Flambae's head as he easily leaned to one side.

"Hah! You missed -!" Flambae grinned, stopping to sneer down at his now-shieldless opponent,.. right before the shield that had just rebounded off the lamp post behind him came soaring back to catch him directly in the back of the head.

Flambae was knocked out of the air and sent sprawling forward to tumble towards the ground, only he landed on Cap's fist first.

"Try that again, and it ends even worse." Were the first words Flambae heard as he struggled back to consciousness.

"Fuck." Flambae swore as he shook off his grogginess, all the fight suddenly leaving his body. "All right, you win." He looked up at the Captain sadly. "I just wanted to- it doesn't matter now."

"Are you injured?" Cap asked concernedly. "If I hit you too hard-"

"No, no, I am fine." Flambae reassured him dully. "Except for my pride, of course, And my hoped-for future as someone who was not going to be in prison. I just tried to fucking kill you, that's enough to void my probation. How long until they get here?"

"I didn't call them." Cap surprised him. "In the Army they'd have called this a 'wall-to-wall counseling session'. Two guys taking it out behind the supply shed to settle their differences when they couldn't settle it any other way. Officers learn not to see what happens when that happens, unless it gets out of hand."

"Attempted manslaughter isn't 'out of hand'?" Flambae asked in honest confusion.

"I don't know yet." Cap replied. "Why did you even do it? I was expecting a punch, not an incineration. Are your powers that hard for you to control?"

"No, no, my control over the flame is perfect." Flambae insisted. "My control over myself, on the other hand… is not so perfect."

"Well, in my experience, there's generally two causes for when a man is always boiling over that way. Either he's got something eating him, or he's just a natural born asshole." Cap agreed. "So, what's eating you?"

"What, not going for the asshole theory?" Flambae said challengingly.

"Originally, I had been." Cap admittedly frankly. "But you heard the speech the other day. Robert was right. If we can't believe that we're not entirely hopeless then we shouldn't be here wasting each other's time. And I suppose that also extends to trying to believe that the guy next to you isn't entirely hopeless either." Cap rolled his eyes. "Even if he makes that kinda hard sometimes."

"That… is more forbearance than I was expecting, under the circumstances." Flambae said slowly. "But you have a point. As to what is 'eating me', as you say…" Flambae looked up at Cap. "You are from the past, the 1940s. They had opinions about gay people back then. And you always looked at me as if I were something to be scraped off of your shoe. So yes, from day one I wanted to punch your bigoted ass into the ground."

"What you saw my disapproval of your manners, not your orientation." Cap sighed wearily. "I grew up in Brooklyn, near the Navy Yard. The largest homosexual community in New York at the time was around there. I regularly saw people like that as a kid growing up. They were just people. Some good, some bad, some indifferent, just like any other people."

"… I see." Flambae admitted embarrassedly. "But I think you must see as well. For I grew up in Afghanistan." Flambae surprised him. "Ah, you wince. You are familiar with that culture?"

"Mostly through briefings, didn't deploy there." Cap said. "But… yes. I know how that culture feels about it."

"Then you know what I survived, and why I might be just a bit oversensitive about the issue." Flambae said meaningfully. "And even after I fled from that environment I lived as a vagabond, on the outskirts of many other societies, and such places often have their own intolerances. And again, I was often alone. Most people run away to join the circus or to become a criminal to find freedom. I ran away to such places to find more support, more structure, than I had ever known before then… even as fragmentary as it was. For I had previously known none at all." Flambae breathed out heavily. "So yes, I have much anger. Anger has been my truest friend since I was a boy. Anger kept me from being killed simply for the way I was born. Anger was what let me survive attempts by entire gangs of older boys to beat me to death. And when my power came, anger is what fueled the flame."

"But it also burns you out." Cap countered. "When my best friend died in combat, I was angry enough to try and fight the entire German army by myself… and I made a very good attempt at it. But-"

"Was he avenged?" Flambae asked simply.

"The man who pulled the trigger. The rest of the men he was fighting alongside. The man who commanded them all. All of them died by my hand, or at my command." Cap agreed soberly. "And it changed nothing."

"It meant that those Nazi bastards went on to kill no more good friends." Flambae protested. "That is not nothing."

"I meant, it changed nothing for me." Cap corrected mildly. "My friend was still dead. My heart was still empty. And if I'd filled that emptiness with nothing but anger… I wouldn't have liked who I'd have become."

"Perhaps you should have tried." Flambae countered. "Because I did. And that anger has let me fight harder and longer and faster than I could have done otherwise, to survive many places and people that would otherwise have taken my life." He looked at the horizon reflectively. "So that is why when the people keep telling me that I must have less anger, that I must change my ways, I always wish to ask them. Why should I be so quick to abandon that which has helped me survive so many times? Where would I be without it?!?" he finished impassionately.

"You'd be at peace." Cap answered simply, and the evening air fell silent.

"Peace." Flambae said slowly. "And have you actually found this peace?" he challenged.

"Not for a while." Cap admitted. "But… I think I might finally be starting to."

"To find peace." Flambae said musingly, before chuckling. "And suddenly I am amused to realize that that that actually reminds me of what I originally came here to say. Which was that… even back when I still wanted to set you on fire, I also wanted to be entirely clear with you that I was not even thinking of attacking Invisigal to get to you. When I have a problem with a man, I take that problem straight into that man's face. I do not strike at those precious to him, or around him, just to try and torment him. That is coward shit, and I am no coward."

"… do you realize that you were originally phrasing your reassurance in the single most un-reassuring way humanly possible?" Cap finally managed to get out after a shocked pause. "And that's why we ended up punching each other?"

"In hindsight, yes, I have realized." Flambae chuckled. "In my anger management training I should also ask for advice on diplomacy, perhaps?"

"It might help." Cap smiled. "And this is you after anger management training? Good God."

"Hah, no, they only just started." Flambae reassured him. "Apparently I should have been getting it earlier, but you know what they said at the meeting."

"How's Sonar doing?" Cap asked. "I definitely know he needs counseling."

"I am not sure, I do not know him well." Flambae replied. "As for us, Captain… we are at peace now, if you accept. You could readily have taken my job and my freedom, and you chose to let me keep them free and clear. I will respect that."

"Thank you." Cap nodded.

"But that having been said, the next time she hides my lunch I will not be held responsible for my actions." Flambae continued. "The cafeteria food at SDN is absolute shit, I would rather starve than touch it."

"I'll ask her to please respect the food a little more." Cap conceded. "If you'll remember to just check every bag in the refrigerator before you assume it's missing. Also, it might help to write your name on both sides of the bag."

"Or at least a big red 'X' or something." Flambae agreed. "Captain, a question for my curiosity. That origin story you gave us, was it true?"

"Every word." Cap reassured him.

"Bullshit." Flambae countered. "You are no man grown in a tank, no living weapon. You are too emotional, you have too much empathy. And are also too prone to making an idiot of yourself over a pretty girl." he teased.

"Flambae, just because everything you know is true that doesn't always mean you know the whole story." Cap said knowingly. "That paragraph I gave you was the outline. I just left out all the off-duty parts."

"Hahahaha!" Flambae laughed. "You would think after having been in the criminal lifestyle so long I could spot the trick, but no, entirely under our noses! Good one!"

"What does the team think about me, now that you're asking?" Cap wondered.

"Opinions vary. Some believe that your backstory is a fable, and you are actually some SDN veteran brought in to try and stealth mentor us or do an 'Undercover Boss' thing. Some actually believed your little trick about being more weapon than man, and so give you as much space as you ask for. Some simply don't give a fuck so long as you don't annoy them." Flambae shrugged. "Me? I thought you were a self-righteous hypocrite lording it over- well, it doesn't matter what I thought. Clearly you are not."

"I'm starting to think that the problem with the Z-Team is that it's not a team, it's just a bunch of people who work near the same building." Cap thought out loud. "A loose assembly of little sub-cliques or loners where people don't even really know each other, but we're still all expected to be able to work with anybody else in combination as the assignments come in."

"I understand some other branch offices function better than ours, but the Torrance branch has always been the least well-regarded and well-funded. In fact, it sometimes feels like an outright dumping ground." Flambae agreed. "SDN may be keeping us out of jail, but there is a reason none of us are particularly enthusiastic about it as an organization. Before Robert all the dispatchers they gave us were fucking idiots and assholes, that's why we couldn't stand them. At least our current boss is only one of those two things."

"I'm not even going to ask which." Cap replied amusedly. "And he's only been here a few days, so he can't fix everything right away. Still, if you think it's a good idea then I'll put the 'not quite a team yet' item in the suggestion box."

"We have a suggestion box?" Flambae looked at him surprisedly.

"Yes, it's called 'using your words and actually talking to your supervisor of your own free will about your ideas and/or concerns'." Cap replied amusedly.

"No wonder none of us ever found it." Flambae snorted.

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 11

"I caught an interesting view through some parking lot security cameras the other night, when I was curious as to why a certain transponder was paralleling the route I knew you use to drive home." Robert greeted Cap in the hallway the next morning.

"I walked into a door." Cap replied evenly.

"… you're certain?" Robert asked, and Cap gave a confirming nod. "All right then, if you say so." Robert chuckled while briefly tapping his nose, and Cap acknowledged the gesture with a brief smile.

"Aww, who's this?" Visi's voice came sweet as sugar over the cubicle wall, pitched almost in baby-talking tones. "Who's this little guy?"

"His name's Beef, and get your damn hands off him." Chase grumbled. Cap and Robert both looked over to see Visi kneeling down by a dog bed up against the wall of Chase's cubicle, vigorously belly-rubbing a cute little black-and-white dog who eagerly rolled back and forth waving all four paws in the air while Chase glowered thunderously down at both of them.

"It's fine, Chase." Robert called out tolerantly.

"Well, he is your dog, but-" Chase looked up and saw the Captain adjacent to Robert and broke off. "Don't you have a meetin' about to start?"

"Come on, both of you." Robert told them, and Cap and Visi headed towards the conference room.

"Walked into a door?" Flambae asked Cap curiously as he entered with Visi trailing him. Robert had stopped outside to wait for Blazer.

"Private joke." Cap reassured him.

"Okay, hold up, since when are you two talking to each other without disses bein' served or hands bein' thrown?" Prism gaped incredulously at them.

"We settled our differences like men." Flambae waved a hand lazily. "He's all right."

"Hah!" Punch Up laughed. "I could've told you that already, lad!"

"Really?" Malevola raised an eyebrow. "Hmmm." she rubbed her chin and gave Cap a thoughtful look.

Visi crossed her arms and gave Malevola an icy stare from where was standing slightly behind Cap, and Malevola looked back at Visi and widened her smirk. An angry flare of Visi's nostrils was met with Malevola giving Cap a leisurely up-down gaze-

"Good morning, everyone." Blazer greeted the room, and Cap and Visi cleared the doorway as Blazer and Robert entered together. The tension instantly deflated.

"All right." Robert began. "We have a special project today, regarding our former member Coupe. Just because she got fired doesn't mean she doesn't still have friends in this room… or enemies outside of it." He reached into the manila folder he was holding and slid some pictures out on the table. "These are known assassins from the organized crime outfit Coupe was working for when she got arrested. We don't know which one of them have been sent here to Torrance. We don't know if they've sent anybody else that isn't a known associate. For that matter, we don't even know if Coupe is still in town or if she's already cleared out. But what we do know is that her old outfit has sent someone, both because Coupe herself has gone entirely dark – even to Punch Up – and because some of our information contacts have reported that new faces in town have very recently started offering money for any current info about Coupe."

"So it's time to get out there on the street and kick arse!" Punch Up said vehemently.

"A branch manager has the privilege of putting all non-911 calls into the bit bucket and declaring that we're having a 'limited services day' if they deem it necessary to free up manpower for a greater tasking." Blazer spoke up. "This isn't exactly the sort of tasking corporate normally anticipated it being used for, but I don't have to get their permission every time I want to do it. Obviously the branch office can't do it all the time or else questions would be asked about why none of our subscribers are getting what they paid for, but I haven't invoked the privilege anytime recently… and I'm choosing to do it now. So for today Robert's board will be dark except in case of actual emergency. And that frees all of you up to hit the streets and roust out all the usual suspects until you find someone that knows something."

"Not a problem, boss lady." Flambae grinned cockily.

"I've drawn up lists of targets and teams." Robert continued. "One special note; Visi, you're the one who has her ear to the street to the best, so today you'll primarily have legwork taskings and not rousts. But we still don't want anyone caught alone on the street today if we have assassins in town, so you'll take some muscle along. Sonar? That's you."

"I'm… not really a bodyguard." Sonar said nervously.

"Visi's no slouch in a fight, we all know this." Robert said reasonably. "And your enhanced hearing is also an excellent information-gathering tool, so putting you on the legwork team makes sense. Plus, you do have a reasonable amount of muscle… and more importantly, you're capable of flying while carrying Visi. Most of those assassins don't have flight powers, so you don't need to be a bodyguard. You're an escape option."

"Cap, since you don't know people in town and Golem is not exactly an investigative resource, you two are the brute squad today." Robert continued. "Both of you stay loose and ready, and if any other team needs backup today – or we get a location on the primary targets – then you roll out and drop on them."

"Strategic reserve. Yes sir." Cap acknowledged stolidly, and Golem grumbled a slow acknowledgement.

"Oh, and one last thing. Coupe's out of contact, so she doesn't know that we're still trying to look out for her. So don't be subtle out there. Make sure everybody on the street knows that even if she's no longer employed at SDN, she still has friends." Blazer said encouragingly. "Maybe if we're loud enough, she'll hear that message out there too."

"God, I hope so." Punch Up nodded eagerly.

"So let's get to work." Robert said, and everybody got up and moved with purpose.

"Chill, Cap, I'll be fine." Visi reassured him breezily as she briefly stopped to say goodbye. "I used to do these legwork runs by myself all the time."

"You saved my job out there, and I owe you one. I'll do my best, Captain. I promise." Sonar assured Cap soberly, and the two men traded a nod as the new partnership headed out. Cap and Golem themselves squared up and headed for the parking lot to make sure that the heavy truck Golem normally used to get around was fully fueled and loaded.

"It's the lowest-danger tasking in the entire list, and she has backup, and he still looked like he was watching her step in front of a bullet." Blazer sighed after they were gone. "Are we going to have to put them on different shifts?"

"I think it was just the whole 'assassins in town' thing that had him worrying a little extra today." Robert said reasonably. "Plus the fact that he's still getting used to the new feelings at all, and kiiinda seems spooked at himself about how intense they might be. Things should settle down soon enough."

"He's really sweet on her, isn't he?" Blazer said warmly. "And I can certainly relate to that. Finding someone new that really clicks with you, then having to juggle that and also being their co-worker… it's definitely an adjustment. But often one that's worth it in the end."

"Stop, you'll make me blush." Robert teased her. "But I've already gotten the whole 'I don't think she sees me that way, I don't want to push, I just want to be a good friend' routine from Cap, so I don't think it's quite at that stage yet."

"… Robert, I would bet my amulet against a box of donuts that she's already fallen for him like a ton of bricks." Blazer looked at him incredulously.

"Has Visi said anything to you about it?" Robert asked her.

"Obviously not or I wouldn't have offered to wager on it. That would be cheating." Blazer said cutely as she kissed Robert on the cheek. "But a girl just knows sometimes." She chuckled. "Besides, Visi was ready to come over the table at Malevola just for looking at him."

"I think that you're lucky that I can't afford a box of donuts, because then you'd have to walk around as Mandy alllll the time." Robert said flirtatiously. "Not that I don't think Visi easily could fall for him, if Cap just gave her a little bit of encouragement." he continued more thoughtfully. "But I don't think she'd risk making the first move. She feels to me like life's kicked her in the teeth too often in the past for her to be up to taking that kind of leap of faith now."

"And you just said that he won't make the first move either… oh Lord help us. They're both idiots." she moaned sympathetically.

"Well… at least we'll have front row seats to the show." Robert consoled her sagely.

* * * * *

Author's Note: Poor Steve just cannot deal with all these feelings right now. But hey, surely the relaxed slice-of-life pace in Dispatch will give him a chance to sort himself out at leisure before he has to make any big decisions, right? Right? Guys?

And yes, the reference to the amulet – or, rather, that Blazer has told Robert about it already – means that they've both already had the dinner date scene together. It's just been offstage, as the lives of everybody else are happening offstage. But hey, I told you this Robert was solidly on the Blazer route.

Finally figured out what to do with Flambae. Tried to keep in the 'he's not entirely stable' with 'he's actually not horrible', threw in some childhood trauma, a misunderstanding or two, but hey, they settled it like men.

BTW, that was not Visi torturing Cap deliberately, that was her in full ADHD ramble mode and not consciously realizing exactly what kind of analogy could be drawn between the movie she was talking about and the person she was talking with. But hey, Visi secretly loves romcoms, and now she gets to be in one!

cliffc999 · Jan 2, 2026

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 12

"Four attackers. Database says the leader is King Cobra, green costume and hood, enhanced strength and agility. Strongman is Death Adder, giant man-reptile, he has paralytic poison claws and tail as well as being a powerhouse. Third one is a guy with a nasty sonic attack mounted in a proshetic tail, calls himself Rattler. Last one is a woman who fires paralysis beams called Asp. You'd better hurry, Sonar's already down and Visi's being run ragged!" Robert's voice sounded in their headset.

"ETA one minute!" Cap called into his headset as he floored the pedal. "Visi, can you give me a callout?"

"She's in stealth mode, no comms." Robert said. "Camera view has- shit! Visi just got tagged somehow, she's visible and down-"

"Engaging." Cap replied with icy determination.

The first day of legwork and rousts had produced no results regarding the assassins that had been sent for Coupe. The only noteworthy incident of the day was when Punch Up and Malevola had actually run into a completely unrelated case while doing their legwork, a meeting engagement with a villain called Toxic who'd been making a major purchase from an underworld arms dealer. Several cyborg-augmented thugs had been captured along with a truckload of weapons, but Toxic had escaped.

What few scraps of intel had been turned up had confirmed the tip on the assassins as being genuinely in town, so Blazer had authorized a second day of 'limited service calls' as the team hit the streets yet again. And late in the morning the case had broken wide open not via turning up a useful tip, but by having the sheer bad luck of Sonar and Invisigal walk directly into the entire team of assassins as they showed up to try and buy some intel from the exact same contact that the two heroes had just finished visiting. The chance meeting had turned into a running pursuit as the quartet of snake-themed killers had taken off after them, but even though they'd been cornered and downed eventually Visi's knowledge of Torrance's back alleyways still had let her keep the duo ahead of the pursuers for just long enough for their backup to get there.

The quartet of supervillains had been too focused on their targets, too eager to close in for the kill after having finally caught and cornered their prey. And so they hadn't paid enough attention to the truck coming down the street towards them until Cap jinked the wheel and took it up and over the curb to slam directly into Death Adder.

Golem leapt off the truck's open bed as it came to a stop and walked straight through Rattler's sonic blast without even feeling it, smashing him into the ground with a furious roar. Cap leapt out of the truck cab and knocked out King Cobra with a shield toss before his feet even touched the ground, and the shieldless Cap then acrobatically dodged Asp's venom bolt and sent her smashing to the ground with a capoeira kick. A moment after that street shook slightly with the impact of Golem putting in a finishing stomp on Death Adder, who'd actually managed to shake off the impact of the truck and had been dazedly climbing to his feet.

"Visi?" Cap ran to where she was kneeling in the street adjacent to Asp's unconscious body, puffing into an inhaler. Sonar was just visible lying down behind a parked car nearby.

"He-" Visi gasped for breath. "We - fuck!" she wheezed twice more before the inhaler began to work, and she finally returned it to her pocket.

"Sorry, Captain." Sonar whispered weakly. "I tried, but-"

"He couldn't take off, King Cobra had clipped his wing with his first shot in that ambush." Visi explained weakly from behind Cap. "Then when they caught up to us again he got tagged by Death Adder trying to keep him off me, and then Rattler's damn sonic attack absolutely wrecked him with that sensitive hearing of his. At the end he was tanking practically all the muscle there by himself."

"You did fine, Sonar." Cap assured him as he knelt over the wounded hero. "You held out until your backup got there. That's all you needed to do."

"Flambae is here!" his voice sounded out on the radio immediately before the flaming man himself came swooping down out of the sky. "Are you all right?" he called out urgently.

"Sonar's down, we need a medevac." Cap said crisply as he did his best to triage and stabilize the casualty. "Can you fly and carry him at the same time?" he asked Flambae.

"Easily." the man replied as he picked the fallen man-bat up. "Nearest hospital?"

"Clinic at the SDN facility." Robert ordered. "He'll need the proper antivenom for what Death Adder used, we're getting some prepped here."

"On my way!" Flambae acknowledged, and with a whoosh of flame he flew back into the air.

"Incident secured." Robert announced on the team channel. "Prism, report back to link up with Flambae. Cap, Golem, after you've gotten your prisoners safely in the police wagon you bring Visi back here as well. Everybody else, resume assignments. We've got what was almost certainly the team of assassins coming after Coupe taken down, but let's not assume they were the only ones in play until we finish double checking."

"Are you okay?" Cap asked Visi worriedly.

"I fucking lost out to perfume, would you believe?" Visi spat furiously, as her and Cap sat adjacent to each on the curb while they waited for the police. "I was heading for Rattler so I could sap him over the head and get his sonic attack out of Sonar's ears, and as soon as I got near Asp that stank-ass whatever she was wearing gave me a fucking spasm! Even with me holding my breath, just the whiff I got up my nose was- what the hell was that scent, Eau de Sarin?" She furiously scuffed one shoe on the pavement. "There's Sonar bleeding out at like three to one odds, and I can't even get a solid hit in without losing out to an atomizer full of overpriced flowery shit. Fuck, even before we had to run King Cobra just fucking tanked everything I sent-" Visi fumed as she stared angrily down at her skinned knuckles.

"One whiff from Asp's perfume and you were down? The asthma was that disabling?" Cap asked concernedly.

"No, but as soon as I started to choke I lost my invisibility and remember, I was like only eight feet away from Asp. I managed to duck her first shot just enough to only get winged by it but that still left me numb and shaking and not good for much. Lucky for me that's just when you guys showed up."

"You still did a great job staying ahead of them on foot for long enough to get here." Cap reassured her. "Even with Sonar unable to fly, that alley run you led him on almost lost them. And there were four of them."

"Running and hiding. And then getting taken out of the fight on the first solid hit that connects." Visi replied bitterly. "Real fuckin' list of achievements there."

"I'll… let you two talk." Golem's slow, lumbering voice sounded almost amused as he moved away to go secure the prisoners.

"I only got my powers after I joined the Army," Cap began slowly, reflectively, letting Visi have a moment to wind down. "Before the super-soldier serum, I had a lot of health problems. Including asthma."

"Don't lie to try and make me feel better, Cap." Visi snapped at him. "They wouldn't let you enlist with asthma."

"I had a special waiver." Cap explained. "Dr. Erskine didn't consider my physical imitations a problem, because the serum was supposed to fix them all anyway. And I was considered the ideal candidate for the project psychologically, better than anybody else they could get."

"You really had asthma… in the 20s and 30s?" Visi's anger fell away as she looked at him wonderingly. "What, was it like some mild version or something? 'Cause I doubt they had rescue inhalers back then."

"'Mild' is not the word I'd use." Cap said sardonically. "As for inhalers, I'm not sure if they had them but I certainly know I didn't have any. Couldn't possibly have hoped to afford one." Cap said. "They gave me breathing exercises, said they'd help. I guess maybe they did, if New York smog back in the era of no pollution controls didn't kill me even with twenty-four years of trying. Or maybe the exercises just helped me not to panic." Cap carefully didn't look at Visi, letting her preserve her dignity. "But yeah. Never 100% knowing when the next lungful of whatever you breathed might trigger a spasm, or how bad it might be… having to keep a little part of yourself on edge at all times just in case… that was not a fun way to live at all. So believe me, I get it." He put a comforting hand on Visi's shoulder. "You don't like people knowing?"

"I don't even know why I didn't tell you." Visi answered the question Cap had really asked with a little catch in her voice. "SDN already knew, the rest of the team knew… I'm surprised you didn't see it in my file, that weekend you were helping with the paperwork."

"Chase didn't let me have those parts of the personnel files for everyone, said that it wasn't necessary for what we were doing and I wasn't there to break other peoples' privacy for my own curiosity." Cap replied. "And he was entirely right about that."

"I just… people react to it, sometimes." Visi said softly. "I didn't want to weird you out or anything."

"Well, I'd like to know what kind of inhaler you use so I can carry a spare for you." Cap offered before wincing briefly. "Assuming that we get any non-emergency calls together in the future. Forgot about that for a second."

"Wouldn't I be more likely to need a spare inhaler during an emergency?" Visi teased.

"You're right." Cap smiled. "And-"

"Police are here." Golem lumbered to his feet.

"I'll talk to them." Cap replied, and Visi stayed behind while he went over.

"He likes you." Golem said suddenly, as they both watched Cap dealing with the responding police units.

"It's not like that." Visi protested.

"Do you like him?" Golem asked her simply.

"Not that way." Visi shook her head firmly. "He's fun to hang with, maybe, but there's nothing serious."

"Visi." Golem looked at her disbelievingly.

"He'll be gone in a couple months anyway, when they promote him to some shiny Downtown team the instant he's eligible." Visi replied helplessly. "So why even think about it?"

"He might stay. If you asked him." Golem said wisely.

"You're dreaming." Visi shook her head. "And I wouldn't even have the right to ask."

"Okay, it's all wrapped up." Cap greeted them as he returned. "Let's load up and get back to base."

"You got it, Cap." Visi smiled at him cheerfully… only for her expression to turn rueful the instant his back was turned.

"What are you looking at?" Visi turned and snapped at Golem.

* * * * *

"Good job, everyone." Robert said professionally as he stood at the head of the conference table for the afternoon briefing. "First the good news, Sonar got a little banged up but once we countered Death Adder's venom there was no other serious injury. He just needs a day of observation and fluids… and letting the bruises heal up some… and he'll be back in action Monday."

Visi's sigh of relief was audible on the other side of the table, even over the general murmur of appreciation from the rest of the team.

"Also, Coupe's in the clear. The, uh, Serpent Society-" Robert continued.

He paused to let the entire room, Cap included, indulge in a brief round of laughter at the sheer absurdity of that name and theming. Even Robert's own somber mood lightened momentarily.

"-were the only team Coupe's old employers had sent, and between how much money they'd wasted on hiring the snakes and the clear message we sent, chatter is that they're cutting their losses." Robert continued. "They're still mad at Coupe, but they're not going to throw good money after this much bad money."

"That makes sense. She already testified against them as part of her stayin' out of prison, so all the damage she could do to 'em's already been done. Takin' her down now is just for sendin' a message, and after what we did the message is gettin' too mixed to be worth it. Her old mob likes profit more than payback." Punch Up said soberly.

"And that leads me directly to the bad news." Robert announced like the tolling of a funeral bell, his shoulders slumping in weariness. "After… after the takedown of Mecha Man several months ago, it was assumed that the master villain Shroud had left town after achieving his objective. He'd ended the career of his arch-nemesis' son. Gotten his final victory. And also lost his last chance to recover the Astral Pulse. So why stick around?" Robert exhaled heavily. "Except that skirmish yesterday has shown that it's very likely that assumption was made in error. Toxic, you see, was Shroud's field team leader for the villain squad he put together that defeated Mecha Man. And unlike most of the other villains involved in that battle, who's been locals, he'd originally come into town with Shroud. Toxic had been a key part of Shroud's original breakout from prison in the first place. If Toxic is still here, then so's his boss."

"What do we know about him?" Cap asked simply.

"Shroud is… dangerous." Robert finally replied. "He's a technological genius, an exceptional planner, relentlessly thorough, and he thinks ahead. The trap for Mecha Man... had already anticipated the possible tactics that Mecha Man was going to use, even the ones that had been improvised on the spot. Mecha Man only escaped with their life by gambling that life on a very risky maneuver that could easily have gone either way… and as everyone knows, Mecha Man's suit still suffered irreparable damage and they were in a coma for weeks." He looked up at the group. "If you're entering a situation that it even looks like Shroud has had a chance to prepare for, then the best advice is to abort immediately. And to pray that you spotted the trap far enough in advance that your exit route isn't already blocked." Robert stopped briefly and continued in a firmer tone of voice. "Everything else we know about him is in the files, please stop and pick up a copy of them for your weekend reading. Not that we have even the beginnings of a plan for Shroud right now, but…" Robert trailed off.

"Bastard's probably already putting a plan together for us." Flambae said grimly. "Or for the city. Or for whatever the fuck he's still here for."

"Undoubtedly." Blazer's voice broke in as she entered the room. "But Shroud's still a long range problem. For right now, I just wanted to add my voice to Robert's in congratulating the team on the excellent performance you've given for the past couple of days."

"You all came together, you all had each other's back in the clutch, and you all got the job done." Robert affirmed. "Well done, everybody."

"Z-Team, hell yeah!" Prism gave a cheerful thumbs-up.

"Not to ruin the moment, but has there been any further word on Coupe?" Punch Up broke in.

"… no." Robert conceded. "She hasn't checked in officially or reached out to any of us, and there haven't been any sightings."

"Haven't heard anything neither." Punch Up said somberly. "Well, hopefully she'll get the word over the weekend and reach out later. And even if she doesn't… at least she's still safe."

"But for right now it's Friday afternoon, the sun's getting low, and we've already had a long day. So I'm declaring an early amnesty." Blazer lifted the mood. "Those of you on weekend rotation know who you are, I'll see the rest of you next week."

The whole team got up and headed cheerfully to the door. "Hey, you guys want to come out with us for drinks, or you got your own plans?" Flambae called out to Cap and Visi, and they both momentarily froze.

"Uh, we're good!" Visi finally answered after a moment and Flambae just gave a knowing chuckle as the rest of the Z-Team headed out.

"That was… strange." Robert said to Cap and Visi as the rest of the team faded into the distance. "Talking about myself in the third person like that. I felt like I should have had a monocle and an accent." He tried to joke.

"Are you okay?" Visi asked.

"I'm just… telling myself that Shroud's still being around for round two means I've still got a chance to beat him." Robert clenched his fist, his voice taut with rage. "Assuming I can get back anything to beat him with…" Blazer placed a comforting hand on Robert's shoulder, and he relaxed.

"You've already got that." Cap assured him. "You've got us."

Robert nodded in brief acknowledgement, and Cap and Visi left him alone with Blazer as they headed out.

"You gonna be okay?" Cap asked Sonar as him and Visi stood by the side of his hospital bed.

"Eh, it only hurts when I laugh." Sonar tried to joke.

"Seriously." Cap said somberly. "Visi says you saved her life out there. Thank you. You ever need help, don't hesitate to ask."

"I think… I think I'm already starting to get it." Sonar replied after a long pause. "What I need."

"I know." Visi agreed seriously. "You spend that much time letting yourself down, then getting even one moment where you don't feel like a complete fuck-up is kinda…."

"Addictive?" Sonar grinned crookedly.

"I think she was going to say 'fulfilling'." Cap chuckled. He looked around. "I'd have thought at least some of the others would touch base before heading out." he said with mild disapproval.

"They passed through before the afternoon meeting." Sonar reassured them. "It's you two that put work first." he teased.

"Look, you get bored later on and want me to smuggle anything in here that the docs won't let you have, just text me." Visi said. "… almost anything." She trailed off embarrassedly.

"Have a nice weekend, guys." Sonar laughed gently. "I'll see you Monday."

* * * * *

"It's nice to finally see your face." Visi smiled as the two of them headed down the sidewalk with Cap in his civilian clothes. As Visi's 'costume' was mostly-normal streetwear and no mask, she hadn't needed to change.

"Well, we were running out of places I could go in the suit. Work… a couple diners where you were a regular… definitely not Crypto Night." Steve deflected.

"Eugh. Overpriced fancy-label booze, bitchy snob of a bartender, stuck-up clientele that looks down their nose at anyone not a 'real hero' while being largely corpo shills." Visi agreed vehemently. "That's why I waved off Flambae's offer of drinks. The gang's mostly given up on Crypto Night as well, and that means the only place the team can go drinking in costume is the, uh, villain bar."

"Probably not a good idea to walk me in there in costume." Cap agreed. "And doesn't sound like the kind of place I'd want to show my face."

"Very likely not. And so now everybody thinks we're having our own private date night when we kinda just got, uh, assumptioned into it, so if you just want to call it a…" Visi withdrew into herself. "I mean, it's not like you'd actually have to-" she began to ramble faster and faster as her expression drew up into a pensive, wistful yearning that just tore at Cap's-

"I had a dream about you the other night." Cap's blurted admission stunned both of them into silence.

"… well I better have been fuckin' awesome, then." she eventually replied with a manful attempt at bravado.

"Not that way." Cap said gently as he sat down on a nearby bus stop bench and patted it in invitation. Visi tentatively sat down an arm's length away from him. "But… kinda that way."

"Gonna need some context here, Cap." Visi looked searchingly at him.

"I told you about how I went into the ice. Well… in the dream, I hadn't. My final mission had gone fine and I was back home in New York all gussied up in my class A's. The whole unit was there celebrating the end of the war at the fanciest club in town, everything on the house, nothing too good for our boys. And I was finally going to do what I'd been waiting the whole war to come home to, go out on the town and have a dance with my best girl." Steve looked up at the early evening's stars. "And then there she was out on the floor, and I went up to her and she turned around…" He turned to look directly into Visi's wondering eyes. "And it was you."

"Oh." Visi breathed, stunned down to her shoetops.

"And so that's why I've been so out of it the past couple of days." Steve said.

"And you didn't say anything? What, I was only good enough for you in dream version?" Visi shot back, her voice hurt.

"No!" Cap protested hurriedly. "I-" He firmed his chin. "I had a million excuses, but the truth is… I was scared."

"What would you possibly have to be scared of about dating?" Visi said incredulously.

"Pushing too fast." Cap replied immediately, his voice taut. "Being too late. Missing a signal, catching a signal…" His shoulders slumped. "Everything."

"… did you leave a girl behind when you went into the wormhole?" Visi asked gently as she stared down at her own shoetops. "Was that it? I was just too soon?"

"There was only one girl. Peggy, the girl I was gonna dance with-" Cap began.

"Not to be mean, but that is such a World War II movie love interest name that I really should have expected it from you." Visi couldn't help but wisecrack.

"I think every man in the Howling Commandoes made a joke like that to her once." Cap agreed amusedly, to Visi's relief. "Howard was even brave enough to make it twice, which made him a committee of one."

"Think I'm beginning to see how you could mentally swap me in for her." Visi twitched a momentary smile.

"She was still alive when I went into the wormhole… but of course it wasn't the same." Cap said gently. "She'd gone on to have her whole life without me, after everybody originally thought I'd died. Got married, had a family, had a career… and gotten old, while I stayed frozen." He shook his head sadly. "I still went to go see her in the nursing home from time to time, but on a good day she could remember why I was there, how I'd been found alive again. On a bad day she'd think she was just seeing ghosts." He sighed. "Alzheimer's."

"How did a guy as nice as you get on God's personal shit list that hard?" Visi wondered. "But if she'd already moved ahead like that, and you'd accepted that, then it wasn't her." Her lip quivered and she blinked away tears. "Was it me?"

"No!" Cap rushed to reassure her. "I know you've got stuff in your past you're not proud of, but that was not it. I like you, not some cleaned-up dream version of you. But I knew you were already going through a lot, and I thought it was more important for you to have a friend you could trust than it was for me to have a new girlfriend."

"And did you at any point in that entire excuse for a thought process think to ask me what I might have wanted?!?" Visi said heatedly.

"Only about a million times an hour." Steve replied immediately. "But like I said, I was scared. What we already had going was still one of the nicest things I'd ever had since I got out of the ice." He sighed and looked up again. "I didn't want to ruin that."

"… yeah." Visi looked at Cap sympathetically. "I get it. Believe me, I get it." She breathed out heavily. "You want to hear about what I've been feeling from my side?"

"Only if you want to tell me." Cap said resolutely.

"Okay, you've been doing things to my head practically from the getgo, did you know?" Visi began. "Sure, that first minute you walked in the door I was only just 'Oh my God, they're sending in some shiny PR showpiece to look down his nose at all of us and he's such an asshole he literally wrapped himself in an American flag, can you believe this crap?'"

Cap surprised her by actually laughing briefly at her roast of him. "Remind me to tell you about a man called Tony Stark sometime. That is almost exactly the same reaction he had when we first met."

"But then we're busting those art thieves and you're just grinning ear to ear while we set up the prank. And then we're both laughing our asses off at the looks on their faces when they realized how they'd been played, and I'm thinking to myself Hey, this is actually kinda nice! And I'm suddenly realizing that I really need to watch myself around you or else I might make an ass out of myself. So I poke at you a little more to try and, I dunno, give you a chance to live down to expectations… and then you not only stand up for me even after I punched out our supervisor, but right out of nowhere you're saying that you want me as your first choice. Out of the entire team."

She sniffled and reached into a pocket for a tissue. "I know you'd just meant 'first choice for co-worker' and not the other thing, but still. Literally nobody had ever said a thing like that to me in my entire fuckin' life."

"In hindsight, I sorta figured." Cap encouraged her gently.

"So yeah, from that point on, wheeeeeeoooooo." She made a bomb-falling noise as she waved her hand dramatically downward. "Now I've graduated with honors from the School of Pretending Not To Give A Shit, so I don't know if you clued in-"

"Visi, if 'clued in' was the bright center to the universe then I was on the planet that it was farthest from." Cap said firmly.

"Han shot first, don't believe the corporate lies." Visi replied instantly. "But yeah. Every day after that I thought I knew what to expect, and every day I caught another curve ball. Over and over I'm expecting you to… I dunno, change your mind, let on that I was just a pity project, find a better girl, something - and instead you see me hit rock bottom, and you help me back up like I hadn't even fallen down." Her voice briefly shook with tremulous wonder. "And after that it just kept getting nicer and nicer, and closer and closer…. and I still had a million reasons in my head why it would never work. And that kept going even after I was barely recognizing myself. I mean, have you asked anybody on the team how I used to behave before you showed up?"

"Punch Up mentioned a little about how you used to be more… bitter." Cap trailed off diplomatically.

"He means I was a fuckin' bitch." Visi admitted frankly. "Nobody on the team liked being near me, and with damn good reason. But around you… it's really not surprising that everybody else seemed to clue in that something was going on between us before either of us admitted it to ourselves. Because the way I was going they had to have been thinkin' that I'd been replaced by a pod person. You even corrupted my vocabulary. Go back in time and listen to me the week before you showed up, my mouth made Chase look like a nun. But for some reason words just come out of me different around you. I… I mean, they say catching feelings sometimes does weird things to your head, but is it always this deep?"

"Visi, my romantic history is a bunch of pity dates that were double dates my best buddy hooked up for me and him, and where not a single one of the dames so much as called back." Cap replied. "Peggy was the only break in that streak, and although we'd been friends for years we'd only had our first kiss the day I went into the ice. So I really wouldn't know."

"There is no alternate universe in the entirety of God's Creation weird enough that you could only pull pity dates." Visi said firmly. "You're like Blonde Blazer's even hotter twin brother!"

"Oh, right." Cap realized. "I forgot nobody here knows that the way I look now? Is not the way I looked before I got powers."

"Yeah, I get that being super-cut like you are now is a great glow-up, but that wouldn't change your bone structure. That just means you were average-looking before." Visi replied. "Average guys get second dates all the time."

"It did change my bone structure. And average is not how I'd describe… okay." Cap's jaw firmed with decision. "I need something to draw on. I want to show you."

"There's a dollar store over there." she pointed, and they got up and went inside.

"There." Cap said, handing Visi the pad he'd been furiously speed-sketching in for the past several minutes. "That's me."

Visi looked down and studied the scrawny caricature of a person that Cap had penciled. Despite the speed at which he'd worked, the likeness was remarkably detailed and textured. Visi raised an eyebrow in awe at the artistic talent she'd just seen.

"You should draw manga." she said immediately. "This is some amazing work."

"That's your review of the art. What's your opinion of the artist?" Cap asked expressionlessly.

Visi looked down at the rendition of Cap's pre-serum self, seeing the skinny, awkward limbs, the posture, the almost visible ribs peeking out from underneath the short t-shirt. Cap had drawn a picture of himself in Army PT gear and boots, from when he'd been struggling through Camp Lehigh as a recruit prior to the actual serum injection. She looked back up at Steve's face, comparing it to the face he'd drawn.

"The body's different, of course, but… it's the same face. The same eyes." She shocked Cap with her answers. "… and the same heart?" she questioned.

Cap took a deep breath. "The entire reason Dr. Erskine chose me is because he didn't want the serum to mentally change the person getting it. Just about the last thing he told me before he died was that more than anything, he wanted me to not let it get to my head. For me to stay the person I'd already been before he'd injected me."

"So that's a yes." Visi said softly. "And if that's true… then I wish I'd known this guy when I was growing up." She handed the sketch back to Cap. "I think I would have liked him."

Cap exhaled as if he'd been gut-punched, almost doubling over. "Really?" He almost begged.

"Uh, I was the skinny dorky kid with asthma too, remember?" Visi quirked a grin at him. "You really think I'd have dropped some ableist shit on you if we'd grown up next door? A guy as nice as you are?" Her expression softened into something more warm and loving. "You've really never had anyone say that to you before?"

"Finally found a landmine." Cap was able to force out eventually. "But it was a good one." He wiped away tears. "Because before you, only one girl had ever said that to me. That's why she was the only one."

"Shit, Cap, we're supposed to just be at the asking-each-other-out stage at this point and instead-" Visi tried to shake off the sheer intensity of her feelings and refocus. "Look, we are both so super emotional right now I don't think we could decide which way was up."

"Please don't use the words 'rain check', I've got a superstition." Cap tried to joke.

"But… yeah, we have gone way past 'Cap' and 'Visi' territory with this." She looked up at him and pierced Cap's heart with that same cute little smile he'd first seen at the leaderboard on cut day, the one he still saw in his dreams. "Hey there. I'm Courtney." She held out her hand.

"It's wonderful to meet you, Courtney. I'm Steve." He smiled back and took her hand between his own for a long moment, and their fingers briefly clenched.

"And despite all these feels we're having trouble sorting through right now, I think we can both agree that Steve likes Courtney… and that Courtney definitely likes Steve." she continued as they released each other's hands.

"Now if we could only figure out where the road went from there." Steve commiserated.

"Look. I get that you like to always be the star-spangled man with a plan-" Courtney began, only to stop dead at Steve's flinch. "… another landmine?"

"Embarrassing one." Steve blushed. "It's okay, it didn't hurt. Except my dignity."

"Oh, you gotta explain this one to me." Courtney asked eagerly.

"No, I don't think I will." Steve replied politely after a distinct pause.

"Spoilsport." She stuck out her tongue impishly and continued. "My point is, for all that you've been trying to corrupt me with your 'actually thinking ahead' stuff, I think the only way we're going to get through this is to wing it. Because we are way deep in the undiscovered country for both of us."

"I just don't want to screw this up." Steve said plaintively. "... but we were already screwing it up, weren't we?" he realized.

"I think we only stopped screwing it up just now." Courtney agreed. "The way each of us was waiting for the other one to make the first move - okay, look, I love romcoms, I admit it. But that's to watch. Not to live through."

"You're right." Steve nodded back. "So… well, to continue the earlier analogy, the way you get through a minefield is one step at a time. And checking in at every step to make sure you're not about to push on something too hard and trigger an explosion."

"Yeah, kinda like that. We… we hang out, we relax, we get to know each other…" Her voice caught briefly. "And if we work out, we work out. But even if we don't…" she trailed off pensively.

"I'm still with the 'wanting it to work out'." Steve admitted frankly. "But I think I get what you're saying. Even if we don't go the distance – God forbid – but even if, as long as we really did our best at it, then we can… our friendship can survive it."

"Yeah." Courtney nodded her head vigorously. "Like that. I mean… life is short. Grab that opportunity now, might not be there tomorrow."

"Okay." Steve nodded, as him and Courtney both took a moment and caught their breath, letting the recent intensity cool down to a nice warm glow. "So… what do two good friends who are slowly exploring something more go do on a Friday night?"

"They… go to the movies?" Courtney tentatively offered, and then broke out in a beaming grin at Steve's smile.

"So, 'Typecast 2'. What's it about?" Steve asked her as he came back down the aisle with an armful of snacks and took his seat next to hers. They both reached into the popcorn bucket at the same time and wordlessly grinned at each other over the brief sparks when their fingers touched.

"The first one in the series was about this struggling actress who gets this big role from a movie star that mistakes her for his childhood best friend, but it turns out he's got a secret too, and they spend like ninety minutes falling in love with the people each of them thought the other one was before finding out who they really are, and then they realize they like the real person even better." Courtney explained eagerly.

"I see what you mean about entertaining to watch but not to live through." Steve acknowledged. "Because you think that starting a relationship based on a lie would be a recipe for disaster."

"Way too often." Courtney agreed, before continuing quickly. "But the whole warm fuzzy is about anticipating the disaster but then feeling the relief when it's miraculously avoided at the last minute. That's called tension and then catharsis, and scriptwriters use it all the time to hook in the audience. You gotta love movie miracles, right?" She finished brightly.

"Well it must be working a movie miracle if it got you to come back for the sequel." Steve teased her. "Especially since I can't see how that premise even allows for one."

"Oh yeah, it's good odds that we're about to suffer through the adventures of 'Typecast 2: The Search For More Money'." Courtney laughed softly. "But hey, if this turns out to be a 'we hacked out a sloppy sequel just to chase more box office' thing then at least we'll probably have watched a comedy."

"You know, that was how a lot of the B-movies back when I was a kid made money." Steve agreed. "If you didn't have the time or the talent to be good, then at least be so wildly bad that people still paid to point and laugh."

"I guess Hollywood's Hollywood, any time and any universe." Courtney matched his grin. "Hey, did you get any snacks besides popcorn?"

"Didn't recognize the names, so I grabbed a random selection." Steve searched quickly through the several packets of candy he'd picked up. "Do you like… 'Sour Patch Kids'?"

"I fuckin' love Sour Patch Kids." Courtney gently took the packet from Steve's hand and opened it, and then handed him the first piece.

* * * * *

Author's Note: Shroud foreshadowing! Yay!

I had planned to drag out the misunderstanding mambo between our two crazy kids for a while… and then the characters wrote themselves and got to the confession of feels in just two chapters. This story has gone epically off from what the original draft version was, but as long as it can still continue to help write itself for me then I'm still good with it.

Oh well, at least they're still in 'let's take this one date at a time' mode instead of leaping straight to endgame. I need some kind of arc here, after all, not just a short flat line. And Courtney still hasn't come clean with all her secrets to Cap… you can probably spot the subtle moments where she pulls back, before reaching out again.

Because this is why Courtney is so much milder around Cap than she was around Robert at this same point in canon, even if she's not consciously aware of why yet. In the game there's so much edgy intensity with almost every interaction Courtney has with Robert before episode 7 because until Courtney can confess her guilt to Robert – until she can finally come clean and admit the truth – she needs her defensive walls up in order to be near him at all, and her defensive walls are made out of acid, inappropriate jokes, and cussing. Paradoxically, Visi's slightly increased pace of cussing from her recent low spike means she's relaxing more around Steve, so maybe it's more of a horseshoe than a graph. But still.

Anyway, Courtney's guilt over the almost-death of Mecha Man is obviously not a bar to her interacting with Cap… in fact, being near Cap, being in the moment with him, is her respite from that guilt. Her only temporary respite, of course, because she still has to ultimately go back to work in the morning. So it's still an obstacle in her and Cap's relationship as well… just a more subtle and longer-term one. But hey, that's why this is a story, not a snapshot.

And I really do believe Courtney would have accepted Skinny Steve, whether as a girl of the same age in the same neighborhood or the woman she is now looking back on Steve as he was then. Because she has a valid point; she'd have been in no position to judge Skinny Steve's asthma and physical limitations, she shares some of them. And she is someone who isn't looking for just a pretty face, she's looking for a nice guy who genuinely believes in her and can help her believe she can be better, which, uh, Steve Rogers.

And yes, that is four of the classic Serpent Society members from the Captain America comics. When I needed a quirky squad of villains in a hurry I decided to indulge myself with a tiny in-joke. And yes, the 'Endgame' reference is deliberate, you know me.

Finally, can somebody tell me how Sonar suddenly became episode MVP? Because even I don't know how! Dude hasn't even been bumping cocaine recently, he's getting validated and high on life!

cliffc999 · Jan 2, 2026

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Minus 83

"And now Mr. Anthony Stark, a close personal friend of the deceased, will say a few words." the master of ceremonies intoned into the PA.

Tony Stark stepped up to the podium that President Ellis had just vacated, and looked out over the teeming crowd with bloodshot eyes only mostly hidden by his dark classes. A murmured command to JARVIS projected the eulogy that Pepper and several of Stark Enterprise's best PR people had helped him compose onto the heads-up display in the interior of his glasses, and Tony took a deep breath and tried to steady his shaking hands. It was a crisp late fall afternoon at Arlington National Cemetery and the empty coffin representing Captain Steven Rogers was about to be interred with all due pomp and circumstance.

"We are gathered here today to… I can't do this." Tony pulled off his glasses angrily and slammed them down on the podium. "Because the truth is, most of you are here just to get your faces on camera. Or to network with all the other Very Important People here. Or to try and bask a little in the reflected glory of someone you didn't even know and didn't remotely understand!" he ranted angrily. "… any more than I did." His voice broke.

"I hate that it took almost a month just to get to the funeral at all because we had to give enough time for all the invitations to get sent out. I hate that I look out and see a crowd that's 99% politicians and diplomats and celebrities and barely anybody who actually gave a shit about Steve Rogers as a person. I hate that I can include myself in that fucking category because after the Chitauri I didn't remotely touch base enough. I hate that I built the custom equipment that helped him go on the last mission that he died on, and I hate I just sat through words and words and words about soldiers and sacrifice and all that crap and barely anybody said a damn thing about-!" He clutched the podium almost hard enough to warp the plastic and fought back the edges of a complete hysterical breakdown. "I could do this all day. But it all boils down to that I hate that we had to have this funeral at all, because I hate that my friend is dead. And that I wish none of this had ever fucking happened." He choked and sniffled loudly, tears flooding down his cheeks. "That's it. I'm done. Go have your big 'Yay the Captain's dead' party without me."

Furiously waving away the various flunkies and Secret Service agents who tried to draw him aside, Tony grabbed his glasses and forced them furiously on his head as he walked hurriedly to the nearest building and trudged randomly through the empty halls until he found an unoccupied conference room he could just flop into a chair and collapse in.

"Tony?" Natasha's voice broke through his silent weeping after he didn't know how long. He looked up to see the grave-faced Agent Romanov, in a tasteful black mourning dress today instead of her usual agent-gear, standing in the doorway concernedly. Behind her he could see an anxious Pepper and several other people he knew.

"It's okay, guys, I'm not going to jump out the window or anything." Tony joked weakly. "Plus, I think we're on the ground floor."

"If it helps, I think Steve will appreciate your eulogy today the most out of all the ones he'd gotten." Natasha said sincerely as she took a seat adjacent to him – with an empty seat in-between him and her, he noted.

"Yeah, he could be a surprisingly sassy little shit when you got him going." Tony laughed bitterly.

"Did anyone ever tell you what the first words out of Steve's mouth were when he heard that SHIELD had overridden Fury and sent that nuke?" Clint Barton nodded to Tony. "He had his mike off, but Thor was close enough to hear him. It was impressive enough to make even a god blush."

"Wish I'd have known that before I gave the speech." Tony tried to joke. "I'd have read it right off the cue card."

"There is still time to return and do so, or have me act in your stead." Thor said with rough humor, dressed incongruously in a formal suit instead of his usual Asgardian regalia. "On Asgard…" He began more soberly. "The fallen are mourned with seven days of sorrow. We weep. We acknowledge our grief, our pain… we feel the empty place where they whom we loved once stood. But on the eighth day we feast, and laugh, and celebrate… not at their being gone, but at the privilege of having known them. To have been fortunate enough to share their battles and then live long enough to be able to sing of their deeds – aye, and their jests, and their foibles – after they have departed."

"That's a great thought, man, but I think I'm gonna need way longer than seven days." Tony sighed, before something occurred to him. "Loki. He… during that mess with the dark elves earlier this summer. And sure, nobody else in this room liked him at all, but he was still your brother. Did it stop hurting for you? After seven days?"

"No." Thor admitted frankly.

"Hey Pep." Tony looked up her as Pepper drew near and sat in the empty seat adjacent to him. She laid a hand on Tony's arm for silent reassurance, listening but not pressing. "I'm just gonna apologize in advance for the completely terrible person I'm going to be for the next few days. Weeks. Whichever."

"You won't be the only one. I'm already on a week's suspension for what happened in the last unarmed combat class I taught." Natasha admitted in a rare display of emotion.

"I'd have broken his arm, not just dislocated it." Clint said vehemently. "Some of the younger agents just don't have any proper respect."

Tony looked at Natasha searchingly. "Tasha, were you and the Cap…" He stopped and visibly reframed his words. "I know you were partners and friends. Was there… anything else?"

"No." Natasha said kindly. "Which I think made me about the only single woman in the Triskelion who thought that way, but he was more like...?" She shrugged. "I encouraged him to at least think about taking one of those ladies' offers, but he wouldn't even look."

"I don't know whether to be sad that means Steve never found anyone again, or happy that it means at least you aren't going through a double-wide ration of this grief shit right now." Tony said roughly. "But now that we're on the topic did you guys ever think that maybe working full-time in the agency that was founded by his time-lost love might have gotten a little in the way of him ever getting past her?" Tony said archly. "SHIELD may have been where the world needed Steve to be, but I was really starting to wonder if it was where he needed to be." He looked down guiltily. "Wish I'd gotten around to actually telling him that."

"Yeah. We saved the world, then we drifted apart." Clint said. "It's like we only see each other at alien invasions and funerals. We couldn't even find Banner to get in touch with him."

"Perhaps that was a kindness. It's not like he could have come here even if we had found him." Natasha said softly.

"Pepper, remind me to revisit that question again sometime later in a few months when I can requalify as an intelligent life form." Tony said. "Because for the next while I'm going to be lucky to get as high up as proto-hominid."

"If we can use Steve's death to help motivate us to do more, then I think that would be the best tribute we could make to his life. That's a wonderful thought, Tony." Pepper agreed as she pulled out her StarkPhone and smartly tapped the touchscreen several times.

"Excuse me." A young blonde woman said from the open doorway. "Is everyone all right?"

"Fuck off, Agent, we're having a family moment here." Tony snarled at her. "Who even let you into this funeral?"

"Tony." Natasha gave him a firm look. "Sharon is Peggy's niece. She was here today for her family."

"Shit." Tony facepalmed. "Sorry, kid."

"I entirely understand, Mr. Stark." Sharon Carter replied compassionately. "I've barely been able to avoid having hysterics myself, and I hadn't even met Captain Rogers yet." Her expression fell. "They were still arguing about the exact logistics of how it would work, but I'd just gotten promoted to be the head of his new… support detail. We were already scheduled to have been introduced just a week after-" She trailed off despondently. "I don't know what I'm going to say to Aunt Peggy after the ceremony today. I'm not even sure she understands that he died again."

"… I need alcohol." Tony said into the gloom. "Anybody who wants to, come on back to the suite with me and let's all give room service a nervous breakdown with how many orders they'll have to fill. I think this occasion desperately needs a good, old-fashioned Irish wake."

"I'll have to take a rain check." Sharon replied seriously. "But I'll tell Director Fury that you're just heading back to your hotel to rest and that he doesn't need to… follow up."

"Tell Fury that unless it's literally the end of the world, if he calls me before I call him first then I will deliver my answer at muzzle velocity." Tony said. "Let him sit and stew over whether I'm being sarcastic or not, because even I don't know right now."

"I will." Sharon nodded sympathetically and departed.

"Tony." Pepper drew him into a hug. "We'll never stop missing him, but at least… at least his war is over now. Take what comfort from that you can."

"Day is done. Gone the sun. From the lake, from the hill, from the sky. Rest in peace, at duty's end. God is nigh." Clint sang his preferred version of 'Taps' softly as the distant *crack* of the 21-gun salute echoed across the grounds.

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 23

"Cap, why did I find a box of nicotine patches on top of my locker last night?" Visi asked him firmly, sticking to their 'no real names at work' agreement.

"Because I wasn't able to open your locker to put them inside." Cap replied immediately.

"Smartass." She crossed her arms at him and faux-glowered. 'Didn't we agree we'd actually talk to each other?"

"And look, now we're talking." Cap grinned at her.

Visi pouted at him. "If this is what you're like when you're more relaxed, maybe I should find a stick to shove up there again." She quirked a grin to take the edge off her words.

"Really, Visi." Cap entreated her. "You already know what smoking does to your lungs, and what's already wrong with them, so rather than repeat the broken record the only thing I could think of was to politely offer an alternative."

"I've been cutting back recently." she deflected.

"Okay." Cap said, holding up his hands. "Landmine. Got it."

"… thanks for caring." Visi acknowledged. "And for not pushing." She put the box of patches in her jacket pocket and he acknowledged the gesture with a nod and a brief hug. They'd only just separated in time when the door suddenly opened behind them.

"Morning guys." Robert greeted them as he entered the lobby. "Oh, Cap, that reminds me. The 'no joint patrols' restriction is off. You haven't had a single slip on the emergency calls you have done together, and two weeks is long enough to make the point."

"Thank you." Cap acknowledged.

"That having been said, you're staying in for at least part of today." Robert said. "The new training schedule is starting to strain at the edges what with the extra classes we're running, so we need you to teach more than we need you out on the street. We'll try and find another hero from the branch office's other team to swap into your slot, but we have more people qualified to patrol than we have who are instructor-qualified in multiple disciplines. Come see me after morning roll call to help work out your new schedule."

"Understood." Cap said, and they both headed in.

Later that day Visi finished filling her lunch tray and walked over to the nearest empty cafeteria table with just a tiny little bounce in her step, while softly humming the theme song to one of her favorite cartoons under her breath. She knew she was making an idiot of herself acting this way, but a lot of the time she felt like she just couldn't stop. While Steve and her had only gone on three actual date dates in between the movie theatre and now, now that they'd finally stopped their idiot 'you go first' dance there was no barrier between them just hanging out whenever. And even though things somehow hadn't gone beyond holding hands and kisses on the cheek yet, the shiny honeymoon glow had yet to fade.

Visi smiled slightly at the memories of how much fun she'd playing tour guide for him through several of the tourist attractions in downtown LA the day after the movie theatre. Then Steve had spent the next Saturday showing her this awesome little flea market he'd somehow found tucked away into a corner of Torrance she'd never visited – she'd even managed to pick up a couple things for her place there, and wasn't that just a weird new thing, her actually having things. And just last night they'd ended up almost randomly picking a Dave & Buster's to go to, of all places, and she'd been surprised and delighted to find out that her new boyfriend could hustle pool as well as she could. Together they'd teamed up to clean out some overconfident frat boys who'd thought that beating Steve at the game would impress her or something, and she was still wondering what to buy with her half of the takings as a suitable trophy for the achievement.

She reached her table and sat down and picked up her fork, only to immediately drop it and look up as a looming shadow cut off the light. Another person coming up behind her on her other side made her put both hands on the table and start to push off and leap to her feet-

"Whoa there!" Malevola's deeply resonant voice broke into her reaction, and she relaxed. "Chill, Vis, it's just us."

"Sorry, didn't expect you to be so nervous." Prism said soothingly as her and Malevola took seats on either side of Visi. "I mean, it's been new Visi for the new season for the past couple of weeks, and new Visi's been all smiles."

"What's going on?" Visi asked them, dialing back her wariness… mostly.

"Girl talk, of course!" Malevola grinned. "Like Prism just said, somebody's been in a little mood recently… or more accurately, she's not been in one."

"Did it occur to you that if I wanted you guys to have all the deets, I'd have already told you?" Visi replied wearily.

"Of course it did." Malevola chuckled. "But we're asking anyway."

"Seriously, it's nice that you finally got some and chilled out-" Prism began.

"He didn't fuck me into a better mood, jeez." Visi glared at her. "You know damn well that's a stupid fuckin' cliché. How many hook-ups have you had that didn't emotionally mean shit? Either of you?"

"About as many as you haven't." Malevola said, her voice serious for once. "Which is another thing I wanted to ask you about. You know I'm Sonar's Nar-Anon sponsor, right?"

"The only addiction I've got is smokes, and even that-" Visi waved her hand away. "Why bring it up?"

"To remind you that I actually know a tiny bit about counseling, and…" Malevola's demonic voice usually carried subliminal horror movie overtones even when she was trying to be casual, but with a deliberate effort Visi heard her dial it down to sound more human than she'd ever heard the demon – or half-demon, it still wasn't entirely clear – woman sound. "You spent months acting a certain way. A certain really angry, twitchy, and defensive way. Then you did an almost immediate turnaround right after you met someone new, like you were never that person at all."

"People don't switch up that fast normally. So either somethin's wrong now or somethin' was wrong then." Prism said sagely.

"Fuck off." Visi spat. "He's-"

"Visi." Malevola firmly drove over the outburst. "Nobody was saying that he was the problem, we're not idiots. What we were saying is… actually, what we were asking is, did something bad happen to you? Before you came here?"

"The hell kind of stupid question is that? I was a fuckin' villain, you know that. That whole lifestyle is made out of suck and ass." Visi glared back.

"Actually, no, we don't know that. My lifestyle when I was crimein' was actually pretty sweet." Prism admitted matter-of-frankly. "And this new gig? It's… not bad sometimes, but it ain't like I broke down the door to get into here."

"Not me, either." Malevola nodded. "But you did. And in hindsight, I'm wondering if you came looking for something or looking to get away from something. Add in your defensive reactions, and how you used to react to even the possibility of emotional intimacy like vampires react to crosses, and- okay, there's several possible explanations for how you were acting before, and one of them is assault survivor." she continued as softly as she could.

"Of course I've survived assaults, we only get punched in the face almost every day out there- oh." Visi trailed off as realization sank in. "That kind of assault. No guys, that's what not happened. Not even adjacent to that." She exhaled and relaxed. "You really thought that?" she wondered gently.

"Ain't like it ain't happened all too often in this fuckin' town, whether up in Hollywood or all the way down here." Prism nodded. "But if it didn't happen to you then praise the baby Jesus."

"Honestly, why would you even care?" Visi questioned. "We've been teammates for months already, and you didn't give a shit all through then."

"No we didn't." Malevola nodded back. "And you didn't give a shit about us, either. Nobody here was giving a shit about anyone. But things have been different recently."

"New dispatcher, new schedulin', new vibes…" Prism nodded. "It's like Flambae said your new boy said to him that one time. Maybe givin' a tiny bit of a shit about each other and not just ourselves is how we can lighten things up around here a little."

"I'm fine, guys. Really." Visi reassured them.

"Now? Sure, mostly." Malevola nodded. "My point is, you didn't use to be. And you don't need to talk to us about whatever happened to you before. Like you said, we only just started trying to give a shit so why rush to confide in us? But have you talked with him about it, is what I'm asking."

"… and, that silence is a big loud 'Nope'." Prism looked at Visi.

Visi flickered into invisibility for a moment, before reappearing on her chair. She took a deliberate, deep breath and uncurled from her defensive flinch. "I'll think about what you just said, okay? Now can we get off it?"

"Okay." Malevola said. "And now that the serious stuff is done with, we can finally ask the fun questions." She grinned like the fiend from hell that she was. "You've been going around practically glowing for over a week. Is he really that good in the sack?"

Visi's blush was practically atomic. "We haven't- we're taking it slow, okay?"

"But you are takin' it, right?" Prism said. "You're not still in that stupid holding pattern we were all tryin' not to bust a gut laughin' at?"

"No." Visi gave her a genuine smile. "Yeah, we were being dorks, but we finally had the talk."

"When?" Malevola asked eagerly. "Sorry, but… no, seriously, when? Exactly?"

"… you had a bet going, didn't you." Visi gave Malevola the stink-eye.

"Yeah, and now we're hangin' on your every word. When did you admit it?" Prism begged. "And who admitted it first?"

"… the same day those snake idiots went down, Friday before last." Visi reluctantly admitted. "And, him."

"Whoooooo!" Sonar yelled eagerly from where the guys had been sitting several tables away as he wildly raised his arms in the air. "Yeah baby! That's what I'm talkin' about! And the winner is Flambae, at less than one week and with the first move coming from Cap's side!"

"Hah!" Flambae said arrogantly from where he'd brought his own brown-bag to eat with the others. "I told you! Never bet against the Captain!"

"What's the shouting about?" Blazer asked curiously as she stuck her head in the cafeteria door.

"That was the sound of victory." Flambae posed hammily as he was greeted by a chorus of boos and one furious blush. "A certain pair of people finally acknowledged their feelings for each other, and yours truly won the wager for calling when."

"Oh, really?" Blazer gave a beaming smile to a Visi who by this point was almost starting to flicker into invisibility again. "That's wonderful, Visi! I hope you're very happy together."

"Thanks." Visi managed to stammer out as she tried to relax. "Now can we get some normal back in here before S- Cap gets out of class and makes it down here?"

"Absolutely." Blazer acknowledged. "Don't make it weird for them, guys, please."

"Would never dream of it, boss lady." Punch Up nodded, and everybody returned to their lunch.

Blazer left the lunchroom and then a distant call of 'Robert? I need to see you in my office!' sounded out.

"I hope that doesn't mean more work for us." Sonar shrugged, and everybody returned to their lunch.

"I fuckin' hate you." Visi mock-glared at her female teammates, and they both let her furious glare slide off of them as if from a force field as they got up and found their own seats.

Fortunately, the normal mood had managed to restore itself before Steve made it in and the rest of the day passed without incident, except for a mild round of catcalling when she greeted him with an unashamedly enthusiastic hug right in full view of the entire cafeteria.

Although at their end of shift Visi did wonder why she saw Blazer standing next to Robert's cubicle, just standing there and eating from a box of donuts while looking down at him with an uncharacteristically smug smile on her face.

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 24

"Okay, folks, this one's all hands on deck." Robert said grimly into their headphones. "We've got an entire oil refinery on fire. This is a whole-team evolution, so… shit, I can't coordinate that many people from one panel."

"You can't do it at all, this is going to be moment-to-moment shit under highly chaotic conditions and that needs a squad leader on the ground.." Visi said into her microphone.

"Yes, and I was getting to that." Robert said impatiently. "Stand by at the scene and-"

"Look, everybody in this conversation knows who we need here!" Visi shouted back into the open teamchat. "So get him the hell out of the classroom and send him over here!"

"That won't be necessary-" Robert began, only for another voice on net to interrupt.

"Visi's right, Robert." Blonde Blazer said. "I'm already suiting up to head out to the scene myself, but Captain America has more experience coordinating disaster-response than I do. Everybody hold at the scene for command units to arrive, our ETA is three minutes."

The entire Z-Team was already drawn up at the Torrance FD command post set up outside the blazing refinery when Blonde Blazer soared down out of the sky, Captain America being held up alongside her in one arm.

Cap immediately did a headcount of the waiting Z-Team, then looked over the assembled firefighting units and counted vehicles and men. Multiple teams already had hoses going on perimeter control, but no one was able to approach the perimeter.

"Flambae, you're the only one besides Blazer who can just ignore that heat and smoke and still fly, and I've got another tasking in mind for her. Get in there right now and start a search pattern to pull out survivors. When we have more location data I'll retask you, for right now minutes count."

"On it!" Flambae nodded.

"Malevola, there'll be people not immediately in the flame but who are cut off from the exits. That's you and your teleportals. Get a facility map from next to one of the fire escape doors, then start searching likely places that people will have run to – break rooms, basements, traffic chokepoints away from the flames. Don't get close to any of the primary fire zones."

"On my way." She nodded, and a glowing red tear in space opened up and she stepped into it.

"Refinery foreman?" Cap called out, and one of the smoke and grime-covered men there answered. "If you haven't already head counted your people, do so. I need the names of the people you can't account for, and then I need you to call your head office and all get their mobile phone #'s from the records."

"Mobile phones?" the foreman asked puzzledly, only for Cap to ignore him and talk into his headset.

"Robert? As soon as the foreman here gets you that list of phone #'s, set up a tracking algorithm off the local cell towers and start triangulating those phones. That will hopefully help guide us to them in all this mess."

"And if the phone isn't there to ping any longer?" Robert asked archly.

"Then we'll know that the person carrying it is probably already dead and focus first priority on the ones likely still alive." Cap said immediately. "Fire chief? How much foam concentrate do you have? In gallons. And in what ratio does it mix with water?"

"I've got… maybe five hundred gallons here, I can get more from the station if I call for it. And the ratio is one part in one hundred."

"Ma'am?" he turned to Blonde Blazer. "I'll need you to go and get one of those large metal dumpsters, the kind they use at construction sites for hauling away wrecked building parts. That's going to be our bucket brigade. We dump gallons of foam concentrate in it, then fill it with the hoses, then you dump the whole thing right on top of where the fire's the hottest, and repeat step one. We don't have a firefighting plane right now, so we'll improvise one."

"Good thinking, Captain. I'm on it." Blazer nodded and flew off.

"Fire chief?" Cap said. "He is superstrong and very tough to damage," he pointed at Punch Up, "He is made out of living clay-" Cap spent about thirty seconds summarizing the powers and abilities of most of the Z-Team. "You know the most about the actual mechanics of firefighting of anybody here – figure out how those powers could best be used to supplement the abilities of your people to solve the problems we're facing, and get me a short list in a few minutes."

"How did the fire start?" Cap turned to the foreman.

"We don't know. Everything was fine one moment, the next thing we had catastrophic alarms in multiple places. Pressure spikes, valve failures… everything." The foreman said.

"Weren't there safety systems? Failsafes?" Cap asked.

"None of them worked." The foreman shrugged.

"Shit!" Visi swore. "That's sabotage."

"Chase, this is Cap." He said into his microphone. "Preliminary indicators are that this refinery fire was deliberately set. We may be being distracted from something. Have all other heroes stay loose for possible 911 calls out in town and keep a very close eye on the camera grid."

"We're on it." Chase said.

"Visi, Sonar." He said. "The distraction might be from something else going down here. Sonar, use your ears. Visi, sneak around. Stay where you can support each other, but if there is something or someone hidden around here, I want you to find it. Also, Visi? You'll need more than just your inhaler for this."

"You know I hate-" she protested.

"This air is full of smoke, petrochemical fumes, and dissolved plastic solvents, and the longer that fire goes on the worse it will get. I can already see you starting to cough a little, and by the time we're done here there's going to be an air quality alert across most of the town. So either you get your head in a breathing apparatus or I will bench you and send you to go sit in the SDN medical clinic until tomorrow morning." Cap said firmly.

"Yes sir." Visi growled frustratedly, before melting helplessly at the naked apology in Cap's eyes. "Give me one of those damn air tanks." She snapped at the nearest firefighter.

Flambae whooshed overhead, carrying a badly burnt man to where the paramedics were waiting at the casualty collection pint, then swooped back into the flames searching for more.

"Got it!" Blazer called out, as she arrived back carrying an extremely large metal bin on her shoulders. "You can start filling it now!" she called to the firemen, and several hose teams set up and got to work while another firefighter climbed up to the rim and dumped in an entire 5-gallon container of foam concentrate, then reached down for another.

"All right." The fire chief came up with the foreman. "The real problem is these three valves are stuck open. Someone has to turn the manual shutoffs to cut off the fuel supply to those burns. After we do that, we can start putting out the fires we already have."

"Worse yet, because we've completely lost the automated pressure interlocks, all three have to be shut down almost simultaneously. Otherwise we build up too much pressure in one of the loops and tear the whole thing open, and then we get an entirely uncontrolled dump of the gasoline tanks right on the fire." The foreman pointed out.

"Flambae, muster up, we have another tasking." Cap said. "Golem, this valve's closest, you take it and stand by. Blazer, you take valve number two, Flambae takes valve number three. Take your positions, wait for the call."

"Uh, h-hello?" a new voice broke out. "I, uh, f-figured that if there was a fire, then, I maybe could…?" Cap turned to see a very awkward-looking young man, the first person he'd ever seen to be as physically unimpressive as his pre-serum self even if they were taller. And one who seemed to also incongruously be soaking wet from head to toe, even though they were outdoors on a dry day near a refinery fire.

"Waterboy?" Blazer greeted him puzzledly. "I thought you were on vacation, or else I'd have called you."

"I, uh, I was, but I was still in the area? So I, suited, I mean, I reported in?" he stammered.

"Welcome aboard, son." Cap greeted him reassuringly. "I'm gathering from your chosen name that you can control water?"

"I, uh, I make it." He said. "And control it. And-" he ground to a halt.

"This is a class B fire – gasoline, flammable fluids – so you can't pour water on it directly or else you'll spread the burning fluid. But you can help Blazer fill the tanks we're filling faster, so we can make more foam to dump on the fire." Cap explained reassuringly.

"Oh he can fill them much faster than the hose teams can." Blazer agreed. "Wait here, Waterboy. As soon as I finish helping turn some valves, I'll show you where you can help."

"Uh, t-thank you M-Miss Blazer…" he choked out.

"Right." Cap nodded. "And as soon as we shut those valves and stop dumping more accelerant on the blaze, we can move to dumping the aerial foam loads on the the largest already existing fires, extracting survivors, and clearing away wreckage to open up routes for the fire department team to enter behind us…"

* * * * *

"Describe their actions again." Toxic marveled yet again at how the toneless mechanical voice produced by the voice distorter in Shroud's mask could still somehow convey a subtlety of emotion even when he virtually never shifted its pitch, raised its volume, or varied from his metronome-like cadence.

And right now the boss was conveying that he was just a weeeee bit frustrated, so Toxic dialed back his usual attitude to answer the question literally.

"They all came straggling in there as they usually do, depending on where else they were, but instead of charging in by ones and twos like they usually do they just form up and wait. A couple minutes after the last one gets there Blonde Blazer herself comes swooping down carrying that new guy, the flag-man-"

"Captain America?" Shroud asked.

"Yeah, him." Toxic affirmed.

"I dislike imprecise references when I am trying to gather precise data." Shroud glowered. "Continue."

"Anyway, guy just takes one look around blink-blink-blink, and then with zero pause he starts shot-calling. You go here, you go there, you do this, you do that. And nobody argues with a single word he says, they just bounce. Even Blazer was obeying orders, and she's supposed to be that guy's boss! That part I really didn't get."

"The answer is self-evident. He had specialized knowledge applicable to the problem that she did not, and she is not egotistical enough to be above delegating authority in a crisis. Continue."

"So anyway they pile on in there with a plan, and at this point you can get all the exact who-what-when-where from the film I was taking so I'll just talk about my subjective impressions. Which is that SDN's little fuck-up squad is not fucking up so much anymore. It isn't just that they had a guy there who could come up with an awesome plan right off the back of his hand, it's that they followed the plan. That would have been still a big change even if their planner had been an idiot." Toxic finished.

Shroud took the mobile phone that Toxic held out to him, the one that he'd used to film as much of the action as he could while he'd stood with the crowd in his civilian clothes pretending to be just another rubbernecker, and used its Bluetooth to upload the video into his own implants. He then sat there and thought, analyzing the video as the lights of his cybernetics glowed slightly more brightly. Toxic stood and waited for the boss to finish thinking.

"There are several heroes not visible in your footage. Were they simply engaged elsewhere, or were they not helping fight the fire at all?" Shroud finally asked.

"A couple of them were just out of angle but yeah, the bat guy – Sonar – and our little Invisigal weren't near the fire at all. It's no mystery why she was held back, what with her lungs, but… ehh, I suppose he was mostly useless as well. As is, all they did was meander around the grounds trying to look busy." Toxic shrugged.

"No." Shroud continued after a momentary pause. "They were searching for you. Our good Captain was intelligent enough not only to hypothesize that the fire was deliberately set, but to dedicate his two best scouts to securing his perimeter against the possibility the fire was a lure to an ambush. Fortunately, even Invisigal has never seen you out of costume."

"Well, we were lurin' em out, weren't we? But not to ambush." Toxic agreed.

"Yes, we were." Shroud rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "But our evaluation run of our enemies has turned up a very disturbing anomaly."

"The Captain." Toxic nodded. "Well, he's no pushover in a fight but he ain't no Blonde Blazer either. Want me to round up a crew and go kick in his door? Or you got a plan to bait him out into another trap run? Because if we could take Mecha Man, we can take him."

"No." Shroud said. "Unless you believe that ridiculous child's fable that SDN put in its press releases, Captain America was clearly dispatched here. Until we know who was willing to augment SDN with an elite military special operative and why they were willing to do so, we do not know if assassinating him will solve our problem or expand our problem."

"… you're right, I wasn't thinking. What if we kill him and then his CO gets pissed and just starts sending more guys? Or shit, fucking drone strikes?" Toxic agreed.

"Correct." Shroud agreed. "The Captain is a very irritating anomaly in my data. Until we know more about him, my strategies will be incomplete."

"So what's our next move, boss?" Toxic asked.

"To remind Invisigal of precisely how much she owes us." Shroud answered after a thoughtful pause.

* * * * *

Author's Note: My middle arc is still rewriting itself in my brain even as I try to get it down (for example, I hadn't originally planned on Shroud showing this early), so I still don't guarantee a 1/day chapter pace for the next few chapters. Still, at least chapter 8 finally started flowing together once I had the brainstorm to open it with Cap's funeral.

I hadn't even planned on showing Cap's funeral when I started out doing this fic, but I got to this chapter and realized that it was a necessary emotional beat. And I literally teared up at several points writing that sequence. You could just tell how Steve's loss was savaging all of them, even if some Avengers were more stoic or philosophical than others.

And yes, Sharon gets a cameo. The poor girl really loses out in this timeline, so the least I can do is toss her a kindness. I was very much rooting for MCU Sharon Carter when she first came in, and then after TWS gave her such a nice setup they just seemed to change their mind. She only got a few minutes in Civil War and then she just ceased to exist after that, until the TV series brought her back to be utterly run through the mangler. God, that pissed me off. *sighs* At least in my fic I can allow her to pay her respects and be given a moment, even if I just wrote her entirely losing out the Captain America romance race.

The refinery fire is just a random call in episode 5 that's no worse than any other call. I decided that no, it was serious business. And yes, in my version Shroud set a refinery on fire just to get more data on how much the Z-Team was improving, as it was becoming apparent around town that something was getting them to not fuck up as often. Shroud is a fucking asshole.

And yes, Shroud is adding two plus zero to get four. That is a classic weakness of Thinkers when the actual solution to the puzzle is far less logical than the obvious solution to the puzzle.

cliffc999 · Jan 3, 2026

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 25

"Proto-Pulse Test 10. Pilot ready. Royd?" Robert said as he slotted in the latest attempt to reproduce the Astral Pulse and grabbed the controls of the Mecha Man suit.

"We ready, Mecha Man." The tech genius nodded at the armor-suited man standing in the middle of the testing bay from his position at the control station safely behind armored glass. Invisigal and Captain America stood behind him, watching.

"System power to standby." Robert said tautly as he flicked the first in a series of switches. The brilliant blue light coming from the prototype Astral Pulse began to flicker faster and faster as the exotic-matter reactor capsule began to energize. The Mecha Man suit's visor lit up, and with a whine of electroactive polymers charging up the suit tensed up from its resting posture.

"Simple locomotion…" Robert continued as he brought one arm straight out in front of him… "… feels sluggish. Royd, what was the response time on that?"

"Within tolerance. Keep testing." Royd reassured him.

"'Within tolerance' isn't good enough." Robert scolded. "I need a number."

"… myomer contraction factor 0.86. Response time 0.31 seconds." Royd stated reluctantly.

"It's supposed to be 0.95 and 0.2 seconds!" Robert said frustratedly."If we're this far off target in the first stage-"

"Remember, we keeping de reaction a little cooler so we don't have de same problem as Test 9." Royd said. "Now how is de sync rate?"

"Steady at one-one… so far." Robert conceded. "All right. Complex locomotion…"

The armor leaned forward on one knee and moved its other foot back, raising both hands into a fighting stance… before it distinctly wobbled and almost fell, until it barely caught itself at the last moment. "What the hell was that?" Robert said.

"It look like… primary gyroscope slow its spin for a second, right in de middle of your move." Royd said. "Not sure why-"

"It's because the primary gyros draw power from the same power bus as the spinal servos, and the Pulse isn't giving us enough power to avoid brownouts even with crap this relatively simple!" Robert pounded his fist on the control board in frustration. "Damn it! We cooled down the latest iteration to level out the power surges that almost fried the whole suit the last time, but now we don't have enough power throughput to get out of our own way!"

"But it's a completely stable unit, right?" Cap asked. "Could you use multiple of them? Or-?"

"No I couldn't, for a whole host of reasons that I don't have the multiple years to explain to someone without an engineering degree." Robert said icily.

"Actually, I tink if we-" Royd began, only to break off as Robert angrily powered down the armor and pulled the emergency escape handle, opening up the pilot's compartment of the Mecha Man suit.

"Proto-Pulse Test 10. Failure." He bit out. "Scrap the goddamn thing and-" He slumped. "And send the logs to my terminal. I'll… look them over later." he finished dejectedly.

"Robert, I-" Cap began, only to cut off at the look he was receiving. "Okay." Cap stepped back and the frustrated engineer/dispatcher swept out of Royd's lab in silence.

"Shit." Visi swore softly, from where she was leaning on the panel staring fixedly down into the test bay and at the Mecha Man armor. "He's hitting the wall." she continued sadly, her voice quavering. "Every new test failure, it just… kills him a little bit further, an inch at a time."

"Yeah." Cap said, patting Visi's shoulder comfortingly as he stood alongside her. "He originally thought it was a 'when', not an 'if'. But the more and more attempts to recreate the Astral Pulse that don't work out right…"

"He tink he need da Mecha Man suit to be any man at all." Royd agreed. "And he starting to tink dat never going to happen. And I get loving de ting dat you put most of your life into, or wanting to save your papa's legacy. But-" he trailed off. "Well, I not run out of ideas yet. I get started on trying to figure out angle for Numbah Eleven." Royd turned and left the testing bay to head back to his design lab.

"Why do you come and watch every test?" Cap asked Visi after Royd had gone.

"Well it's not like the rest of the team can come cheer him on. They don't know who he used to be. Even I only found out by accident." Visi said. "So I'm here to show the flag, I guess?"

"I thought that was my job." Cap tried to cheer the despondent Visi up as she continued staring at the armor.

"Hah." She smiled for a moment, before her face turned wistful again. "I just… really really wish one of these tests would work, y'know? He needs it. And he-" Her voice caught. "-shouldn't ever have had this happen to him in the first place." Visi was struck by a thought. "Hey Steve? When you see Blazer later today, ask her how the test run went."

"But we just saw how-" Cap began, before realization sank in. "Oh, right. You want to know if he's talking to her about this. Because he needs to talk to somebody, and who better than his girlfriend?"

"Exactly." Visi looked over her shoulder at Cap. "Making sure he's got someone looking out for him... is the only thing I can think of to do for him right now." she trailed off despondently, as she turned to stare back down into the test bay.

"You've got a good heart, Courtney." Cap complimented her.

"Don't I fuckin' just?" Visi forced her voice to stay bright and steady, but only Cap's standing behind her at that moment allowed her to keep him from seeing her wince.

* * * * *

"I don't think that would be feasible." Blazer said into the phone as she glanced upwards. "And I need him here." she finished firmly as she leaned back in her office chair.

"Look, he's just wasting his potential in Torrance. Even from just the first month's reports we can tell that the possibilities with him are endless if we can just get him properly placed-" SDN's Vice-President of Marketing entreated her.

"I'm not sure I understand. To precisely which reports are you referring?" Blazer asked with considerable politeness.

"Customer satisfaction indexes. Social media trends. The Q-rating on that one PSA you convinced him to do-" the VP began expansively.

"A decision that I now deeply regret." Blazer muttered softly to herself.

"Really , Blazer, the Z-Team?" the VP finished incredulously. "Do I even have to list the reasons why that was a horrible decision?"

"It wasn't my decision. You're well aware of the limitations imposed by his lack of verifiable resume-" Blazer began smoothly.

"Limitations that can be waivered by the head office in a heartbeat, and will be if you just give me the slightest bit to work with here." the VP continued unctuously.

"The Captain is currently attending a training exercise, so I won't guarantee to be able to get ahold of him immediately. But I will communicate your offer to him and get back to you with his response later today… a response that I warn you in advance is overwhelmingly likely to be 'No thank you'." Blazer informed him.

"I'll have the outline of our proposal in your email queue as soon as I get off the line. Please make sure he gets it." the VP said. "And that he understands that's only the first offer."

"Good afternoon, sir." Blazer finished mildly, and then pressed the button to disconnect the call.

"Currently attending a training exercise?" Captain America raised an amused eyebrow from where he'd been silently standing in front of Blazer's desk the entire time, listening to the call on speaker.

"Yes, you were getting a lesson in corporate doublespeak." Blazer said sardonically.

"Particularly the part where you said that you 'won't' guarantee, not that you 'can't' guarantee." Cap smiled. "Government doublespeak uses the same one."

The ding! from Blazer's office terminal informed her of an arriving email, and she wordlessly made the several mouse clicks necessary to pull it up, read it, and then print out a copy. Captain America walked over to the office printer, picked up the sheet and read it in a single glance, and then wordlessly crumpled it into a tiny ball and tossed it into the nearest trash can.

"And I'll make sure to let him know. About fifteen minutes before close of business today." Blazer and Cap traded matching grins.

"Oh, one last thing, Did Robert tell you about how the Proto-Pulse test went this morning?" Cap asked her.

"Thanks for reminding me." Blazer tapped her forehead as if physically jogging her own memory. "You and Visi were there, right? I was going to ask you about how it went."

"Which means he didn't tell you, which is what I was really asking." Cap said somberly. "The short version is, it didn't go well at all and he took it even less well. The less likely the Mecha Man restoration looks to succeed…" He shrugged meaningfully.

"Oh dear." Blazer winced. "I knew I should have gone there to support him myself, but there's always another-" She waved her hand. "That's just an excuse, but sometimes I think they want me to die in this office buried underneath a mountain of meaningless memos."

"You need an assistant. Somebody with the full-time job of dealing with all the routine so your time is saved for the important things. Like a general's aide-de-camp." Cap suggested.

"Executive assistants are for branch offices with luxury budgets." Blazer said ruefully. "Which Torrance is not. Thank you for letting me know Robert needs looking after, Cap. And thank you, again, for taking the new instructor duties basically full-time. I can't imagine how else we could have cleared up the training logjam in anything under months... particularly not since it's looking like the A-Team's training schedule has been too much filler and not enough killer as well, so we're going to have to revamp there as well."

"Glad to help, ma- Blazer." Cap finally yielded to her affectionate glare, and left her office with a nod.

"Excuse me, but are you fuckin' nuts?" Courtney greeted Steve as they met up at end of shift that day.

"There has been the occasional accusation." Steve answered her good-naturedly. "What prompted it this time?"

"Okay, did you actually get a fast-track offer from corporate to go straight to the A-Team of the Hollywood branch that you then dropped like a hot rock, or is the rumor mill smoking blunts again?" Courtney probed.

"I got an offer. Which I immediately round-filed." Steve acknowledged.

"Steve, literally the only other person in this entire branch – even from our own A-Team – who could even contemplate getting a offer like that is Blazer herself. How could you turn it down?" Courtney looked at him incredulously.

"Several reasons, not the least being that I'm almost entirely certain I wouldn't enjoy working with any of those people." Steve answered honestly. "Which is, incidentally, one of the same reasons Blazer rejected her offer back in the day."

"Yeah, and those rejections are almost certainly why she's stuck in this dumping ground now." Courtney waved her hand. "You've got to- to look out for your long-term interests. You've been on this planet barely a month… what, are we just people you're hanging out with a little while while you wait to catch a ride?"

"No, I've accepted that there's not going to be a 'ride'." Steve acknowledged soberly as the two of them walked towards the nearby diner. "This is where I am now."

"Which means that you need to make the best of your situation overall, not just get by from day-to-day." Courtney encouraged him. "And 'the best' for you is not here."

"Yes she is." Steve teased her, and she immediately turned red.

"Hey, I'm serious!" Courtney stamped a foot as she walked.

"Courtney, I don't really need money and I don't need fame." Steve reassured her soberly. "Tony had more of those things than anyone else I've ever met and they never made him happy. You know what did?" He smiled down at her. "Having useful work to do. Knowing that the people he cared about were doing well. Having good people to care about in the first place. I've already got all those things."

"I just don't want you looking back later and going 'Shit, I really swung and missed there. And now it's too late.'" Courtney's face flushed slightly. "Because let me tell you, it's really not a great feeling."

"I've swung and missed before." Steve noted. "But I'm not gonna let that stop me."

"With brains like that, you're lucky you're hot." Courtney jibed back affectionately.

* * * * *

"You sure you don't want to come with?" Blazer asked Robert entreatingly. "We could have an evening in, sit by the fire." The two of them were standing outside the SDN building in late evening, over an hour after everyone else on day shift had gone home.

"I'm falling behind on my exercise program." Robert answered heavily. "Already skipped my last session due to work. I skip too many more and you'll end up having to roll me around in a cart." he finished with weary amusement.

"A cart?" Blazer retorted cutely, one hand going to her head as if she were searching for a fainting couch. "I would never make you suffer through something as plebian as steerage class, dear. Princess carry for you, nothing less."

"Heh." Robert smiled slightly at her antics. "We can do something tomorrow night. For right now I just need to hit the gym. Work off a little stress, then get a good night's sleep."

"All right." She kissed him softly on the cheek. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"You too." He nodded affectionately at her and she flew off. Robert stood staring up into the sky after her for a long moment before turning and heading back into the building.

Robert changed into his workout clothes, went into the empty gym, heavily loaded up a weight bar on the bench press rack, and got to work. One slow repetition… two… three…

His arms collapsed halfway up on the fourth rep and the weights sank heavily down onto his chest, pinning him in place. Straining until the veins in his neck stood out like cords he shoved at the bar, the only sound his gasps of breath through gritted teeth-

"You're not supposed to lift without a spotter, idiot." Flambae's voice broke into his concentration as the flaming hero reached down and easily pulled the weights off of Robert's chest. "This is what, two hundred and fifty pounds? Three hundred? Trying to bench that much by yourself without superpowers? What were you even thinking?"

"That I'd benched that much weight before, lots of times, and never had a problem." Robert said tightly as he sat up and wiped his brow.

"Oh no, not the consequences of my own actions! How will I ever survive?" Flambae mocked him.

"Well you'd certainly know about consequences, convict." Robert snapped back at him.

"Are you seriously fucking-?!?" Flambae stopped and took a measured series of breaths, counting to himself.

"I'm sorry." Robert stepped back reluctantly. "I just- no, my bad day shouldn't be your bad day. It shouldn't be anyone's bad day."

"And at last, you start practicing what you preach-" Flambae spat back. "No, no, the counselor says… what is that word? De-escalate?" Flambae spent the next couple of minutes concentrating on finishing his reps in silence while Robert carefully gave him his space.

"The Captain once told me that when a man is 'boiling over', either that man has something eating at him or they are just naturally an asshole." Flambae eventually continued as he returned his squat weights to the rack. "You've put up with us for weeks before losing your temper, so clearly the second is not true."

"The Captain told you, huh?" Robert's hand clenched tightly on the bench. "Yeah, he's a real fuckin' leader."

"… and that answers the question of what is, as they say, eating you." Flambae chuckled harshly. "How do you think I felt? It wasn't just my seeing prejudices that weren't there for why I couldn't stand him. If the Z-Team had any leader at all before he came along it was me, and that didn't last a day after his first entering the room."

"And now you're cool with each other." Robert shook his head. "But it's not like I can use the solution you two used. One punch from him would crumple me like tinfoil."

"Ah yes, because the two punches I lasted is so immeasurably superior." Flambae drawled ironically. "I haven't taken a defeat that decisive even from Mecha Man, and that hero has actually amputated pieces of me!" Fortunately, Flambae had been busy dramatically orating as he walked around, so he entirely missed Robert's almost swallowing his own tongue.

"It's not just that." Robert said. "He hasn't even been here a month yet and he can already do my job better than I can. They've got him teaching tactics and analysis to the A-Team now, for God's sake. I… at first it was fine, he was practically saluting and calling me sir. Now Blazer takes him to catastrophe sites and gives him overall field command while I sit on a chair and do customer service. He can basically do everything better than everybody." He sighed. "I know I shouldn't be a jealous asshole about it, especially since he's being the least asshole-ish guy about it in the entire world. But somehow that only makes it worse."

"I have seen your girlfriend. If you consider your life inferior to his in all respects then you are an idiot." Flambae snorted. "… granted, I am positively amazed at how relatively pleasant Visi is to be around now. The Captain may still be second place to you in the great building-wide romance race, but he is not third."

"Yeah, he's her great shining hero who helped her turn her whole life around." Robert slumped. "And Blazer maybe thinks I'm cute."

"All right, I tried." Flambae shrugged. "This comforting shit, really not my area of expertise. but-". He paused in realization. "You are one of the dispatchers who were a former hero, yes? You had powers. And then you lost them. That is why his presence galls you so."

"Yeah." Robert eventually filled the silence.

"I cannot help you there." Flambae acknowledged slowly. "The thought of losing my own powers is terrifying. They are basically all that I have." He turned to Robert. "Were they all that you had?"

"… I'm waiting to find out." Robert eventually replied.

Flambae searched for further words to say and visibly failed to find them. With a nod to Robert, he stepped away and left the dispatcher to his thoughts.

* * * * *

Courtney knelt down in front of the big front-loading dryer and started emptying her clothes into the laundry basket, pausing only to indulge herself in a brief face-dive into her warm and softener-scented sheets. She finished filling her basket, stood up holding it in her arms, and turned to leave, and-

-the basket hit the floor as she flinched away in momentary panic, before clenching her fists and snarling defiance at the green, acrid-smelling silhouette standing in the door of her apartment building's laundry room.

"Visi, Visi, Visi." Toxic's sneering, mocking drawl filled her ears as the acid-controlling villain leaned arrogantly against the doorframe, the faint smell of dissolving paint and metal just tickling her nostrils at this distance. "We had such fun together that one time! But now you don't call, you don't write… it really hurts a guy's feelings to be ghosted like that, you know?"

Visi immediately turned invisible, to be met by Toxic's mocking laughter. "I'm blocking the door, babe! You can't get out!"

"That was not her intention, fool." Shroud's voice sounding from the hallway outside turned Visi's blood to ice. "She was keeping you from seeing that she was reaching for her communicator."

"-fucker." Visi spat, returning to visibility as she stared down at the device she was holding in her hand. "And yeah, I've got no signal. That you?"

"Of course." Shroud stated coldly as Toxic stepped aside to let his boss enter the room and then immediately resumed his blocking position.

"If you're not hiding behind the walking waste dump while he does all the work, then this isn't a hit." Invisigal snarled at Shroud, her voice taut with fear. "So what the fuck do you want?"

"For you to finally deliver what you promised me." Shroud glared down at her.

"Are you fuckin' high?" she spat. "We had a deal! I do one job and I get paid free and clear! But I did the job and then you repo'ed the payment before I'd even kept it a day! So I'm supposed to take your IOU again this time? How stupid do you think I am?"

"You really don't want to hear the answer to that question, Visi." Toxic sneered. "Well, unless you're secretly a masochist. Which, come to think of it, would explain a lot about your life…"

"The job is incomplete. And until it is complete, the payment will be withheld." Shroud replied.

"Yeah, well, I don't even want your shit anymore. Get your 'master plan' done without me." Visi finished her sarcastic air quoting and glared at him over crossed arms.

Shroud wordlessly stared at her for a long moment. "You have very little with which to bargain, and much that you already owe."

"This isn't a haggling session, dipshit. I mean it. Whatever you think you can get from me, whatever scheme you're hatching now, not interested." Visi said, keeping her voice from shaking with a visible effort.

"Toxic." Shroud ordered after another thoughtful pause, and the henchman immediately reached out and grabbed a nearby packet of fabric softener and began to dissolve it in his acid-coated hand. The chemical fumes filled Visi's nose, and she began to cough- and Toxic used her momentary disablement to grab Visi by the collar of her jacket.

The acid villain's superhuman strength easily pinned her in place, helpless to either flee or resist as Shroud slowly reached into his hooded duster and withdrew a long-barrelled vintage heavy revolver. Shroud spun the cylinder of the revolver with a casual flick of his other hand, and then placed the muzzle directly against Visi's forehead.

"For every further word of defiance, I pull the trigger once." Shroud stated tonelessly.

"Eat-" Visi spat.

Click.

"Shit-" She forced out.

Click.

"A-And…" she stammered after a long pause.

Click.

"Die!" She flinched and closed her eyes.

Click.

Visi broke down into a series of shuddering gasps, needing a long moment to realize that she was still alive.

"… I see." Shroud eventually stated as he reholstered the revolver. "That… certainly clarifies your position."

"Fuckin' well should." Visi whispered hoarsely, her eyes still clenched shut and leaking tears as she forced down her trembling. "Now either get it over with or get out of my life."

"Release her." Shroud ordered, and Toxic stepped back. "You are not interested in the 'carrot', and even imminent death has proven insufficient as a 'stick'." the mastermind continued. "Further negotiation between us is therefore pointless. But neither am I interested in revealing my hand to the SDN too soon. So you will keep silent about this meeting… or else I will ensure that those whom you least desire to learn more about you will instead learn everything about you."

"… yeah." she replied slowly. "I get it. Now get lost."

Shroud turned and left without another word, and after staying behind long enough to cover his boss' retreat so did Toxic.

"O-kayyyy, I really did not expect our little Visi to grow so hardcore in just the few months she's been gone." Toxic marveled. "But, uh, four trigger pulls? That's basically guaranteed death… and she wasn't stoppin'. What was our plan B in case she got popped?"

Shroud's only answer was to reach into his pocket and withdraw two rounds of antique revolver ammunition.

"… it was a bluff. Duh." Toxic laughed at himself as he powered down into his humanform and they both entered the van they'd parked nearby. "Makes sense… but she just called the bluff, so what's our plan B now?"

"It was not a bluff." Shroud stated as they drove away. "It was a test of her resolve. And while I did not expect the results that I received, I am entirely satisfied with them."

"Losin' me again, boss." Toxic shrugged. "Do I need to know the real plan now, or is this another one of those wait-and-see things?"

"It is most ironic. Invisigal's 'heroic' defiance has only given us the very information that she sought to deny us." Shroud chuckled once in a rare moment of mirth for him. "Even the most elementary logic would suggest that if she is truly willing to accept death rather than cooperate with us, then it is clearly not her own life or her own good fortune that she values most."

"She's fallen in love with him." Toxic laughed. "Yeah, even I could spot that… and sure, clearly the oxygen deprivation has finally given her brain damage if she's getting that sappy. But how's that benefit us?"

"Think. Invisigal is not the type of person to die for unrequited affection. Captain America must have encouraged her attentions at least as much as she has obviously encouraged his, or else as the 'woman scorned' she would have ultimately betrayed him in the end out of resentment. But if he is indulging himself in such personal affections then one of two things is true." Shroud paused in obvious invitation.

"Fuck." Toxic swore in realization. "You're right. If soldier boy is actually taking time out to look for love in all the wrong places, then that would mean that Visi's the target of his mission – that they're doin' some reverse Mata Hari shit here – but that's stupid, because she ain't worth that kind of big government mission by herself. Literally the only thing that makes her not small change and small-time is her possible connection to us, but if she were part of any real spy games she should have rushed to sign back up and start playin' double agent. So if it ain't that, and it ain't, then it's the other thing."

"Correct. Once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must contain the truth. Captain America clearly considers himself free to indulge in personal pleasures and diversions of this scope. And that means that as vastly improbable as it is, the Captain must have chosen to join SDN and serve on the Z-Team entirely on his own volition and as a part of no greater mission. And that means that our concerns about heightened government interest have turned out to be baseless, and so we are free to resume our original schedule."

"Don't tell me you believe that fairy tale they put out about him now." Toxic snorted.

"Of course not. But whatever the truth there may be, it is no potential danger to us – and there my concern ends." Shroud stated.

"Fair enough. And hey, since we're not gonna get drone striked if we cap the Cap then do you want me to go back to that plan where I get a kill team together after all?" Toxic asked.

"No." Shroud answered after a thoughtful pause. "While it would not be disastrous for SDN to be on a higher alert status at this time, it would be inconvenient. We shall allow the Captain to live his life unmolested… for the moment." Shroud chuckled again with grim satisfaction. "After all… their time is coming."

* * * * *

Author's Note: This is the part of the game where Robert starts to slowly despair he'll never be Mecha Man again, and in this timeline there's an obvious outlet for those negative emotions. So he's struggling with it a bit.

I find it hilarious that the original weight room scene is perhaps Flambae's second worst moment of assholery in the game and to put that in perspective, his first one involved an actual murder attempt. But now the fact he's actually gotten anger management training means he's the mature one in it. This story has gone to such weird places.

And poor Visi. She was having such a wonderful honeymoon period, but guilt over the Astral Pulse is now starting to creep back in, and now Shroud turns up being fucking Shroud. Of course what Visi just did right now is perhaps the single most heroic thing she's ever done in her life to date, but she's not going to see it that way.

I am trying to write Shroud as dumb as I possibly can and still have my plot function, but I'm afraid I'm still going to end up with Actually Smarter Shroud. Oh well, the life of an author is fraught with peril.

cliffc999 · Jan 3, 2026

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 26

"Why the hell am I even here?" the brightly-costumed hero whose personnel file said he was 'BRadical' said heatedly as the small squad of heroes lined up in the gym. "I've been working here for three years, I already know how to do my job!"

"The Army's got guys who've been in for twenty years and more, they still line up for refresher training right alongside the new guys." Captain America said amiably. "This training session isn't a remedial, it's just a review. There's no reflection on anyone's performance up to date."

"Like you could talk about performance anyway, Z-Team." A large beefy man who'd introduced himself as 'Thundersize' eye-rolled. "There isn't a one of you could even touch any of us. Even Waterboy here could score on you losers." The water-controlling hero standing at the end of the line flinched nervously at the mention of his name.

"Funny you should mention that." Cap smiled. "As I said when you entered, today we'd be doing some simulated street situations. And you all just failed the first one."

"What?" the bespectacled heroine Brainbook, whose powers were largely intellectual and not combat-based, said. "But you haven't even started it yet!"

"Because of course the bad guys are going to give you fair warning before they start." Cap said sardonically. "Lesson one: the bad guys are going to cheat. That's kinda why they're the bad guys."

"Yeah, well, you can't just arbitrarily declare 'you lose' like it's a playground-" BRadical began, before Cap interrupted him.

"Check your backs." Cap smiled, and the several heroes all had shocked reactions when they discovered the 'KICK ME' Post-It notes that someone had stealthily attached to them.

"And with that, I'd like to introduce today's guest instructor Invisigal." Cap smiled as the heroine faded into visbility alongside him.

"Invisigal's time limitation on her invisibility makes it highly improbable that she would be able to ambush us in such a manner during an actual event." Brainbook pointed out mildly. "Because she would almost certainly be visible at some point during the earlier sequence, and so we would already be aware of her presence at the scene."

"Is she the only invisible person in the world? Of course not." Cap lectured. "Are you always guaranteed that your opposition won't know your arrival time? No. Is it impossible that an enemy might bait you out by letting you see an accomplice first and have you focus on them thinking they're the sole threat before lowering the boom on you from behind? That's what just happened to you right now. And lastly, has nobody ever deliberately lured a hero into a preplanned ambush? " Cap paused meaningfully. "Has anyone seen Mecha Man lately?"

The room fell silent as Visi turned invisible, apparently to lend dramatic punctuation to Steve's remark.

"SDN's usual training focuses on standard responses to known situations." Cap lectured. "And there's nothing wrong with that. Standard Operating Procedure is made standard precisely because it usually works. But there's always going to be edge cases and unplanned events that don't fit neatly into any book, and when that happens you'll be the person on the spot. And it'll be all up to you to figure out what to do without any checklist to guide you. And getting you started on thinking in those habits is why having this training session on 'tactical improvisation'. Thundersize, you have arrived at a service call for something routine – we're talking 'find a lost kitten' level routine – but when you get to the location, nobody's there. Your first response is…?" And the training session proceeded from there.

"Eugh." Invisigal glared at Cap as she came out of the women's locker room after end of class, still vigorously toweling her hair. The training session had gone for over an hour and the several A-Team and reserve squad heroes who'd been selected for it had been experienced people who'd already learned full control and skilled usage of their powers, but had still largely failed to perform well when handed situations to deal with outside their usual experience range. Blazer's and Chase's recent evaluation that SDN's training and doctrine was perhaps a little too inflexible for non-routine hero work was proving depressingly accurate so far.

"If I'd known this teaching assistant thing would involve my being soaked I'd have begged off." Visi groused. "I had to send you to my place to pick up a new set of clothes for me, even!"

"Sorry, I hadn't thought ahead." Cap apologized. "Next time I'll put more thought into the powers of the people being trained that day."

"Eh, I suppose the kid needed the win." Visi conceded. "Waterboy looked like he wasn't getting many of those recently." She smiled. "And I thought he was gonna bust a gut when he realized he was the only passing grade for the day."

"It was a valuable teaching moment when the entire class realized that the member they had the least respect for was the only one who succeeded." Cap agreed. "Soaking down the entire general area to short out your invisibility was certainly effective."

"Being fair, it's not an option the others had." Visi pointed out. "What you were expecting them to do in that last scenario?"

"Well, the entire point was to see what they could improvise." Cap said. "But to suggest just one possibility for each of them – Thundersize was strong enough to just yank the entire exercise mat on the floor sideways and send you tripping, which would have prevented your getaway. BRadical should have ignored the manual's advice about advancing slowly and realized that his main chance of catching you was to blitz you in close-combat before you could move more than a couple of feet away from your last known location, particularly as you don't have any physical powers for close-in fighting. Brainbook's failure was in not acknowledging that in the scenario posited her only valid move was to retreat and call for backup – the scenario didn't have civilians in immediate danger, so attempting a one-on-one versus a veteran antagonist with no physical superpowers and minimal combat skills was just her pride talking and not necessity." Cap methodically outlined.

"Well, at least you gave me a chance to start off my day kicking some ass." Visi sighed. "Weird to realize that my fake villain career was... it's not important."

"Hey, you okay?" Steve asked gently. "You've been a little off all morning."

"Just… thinkin' about my past." Courtney said pensively. "And how much I sucked during it."

Steve drew her into a reassuring hug. "You've got red in your ledger, and you want to wipe it out. Trust me, I know how that one goes." He smiled down at her as they separated. "But you're already doing that."

"I just-" Courtney looked away. "How far does that go? What if what I already did was too much?"

"Do you want to talk about it?" Steve asked her gently.

"I have to get out there and start taking calls, and you've got class." Invisigal shook her head. "Later!" She faded into invisibility before Cap could reply, and the exit door at the end of the hallway opened and closed a long moment later.

Cap sighed and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and then turned and headed back into the office.

"You need somethin'?" Chase looked up from his desk.

"How exactly does the Phoenix Program evaluate someone for suitability for their program?" Cap asked.

"Sometimes I think they do it just by flippin' a damn coin." Chase grumbled. "I seen people get approved for it with a string of murders long enough to read 'Continued on second page', and I seen people get passed over for consideration on a first offense. Ain't never made no rhyme or reason to me at all. You gonna get around to the reason for your curiosity sometime before I need an embalmer?"

"Invisigal and I talk a lot almost every day." Cap said. "And by this point she knows basically my entire life story. And I still know very little about her life before she joined SDN." He held up a hand to forestall Chase's reaction. "And I'm not stupid. I know that's only happening because she's really doesn't want me to know about her past."

"'Course she's ashamed of her past, and she should be. But shame ain't worth shit." Chase glowered. "She can be ashamed all she damn wants, she still did it. Still hurt people, robbed 'em, messed 'em up. Her shame ain't puttin' back what she took or fixin' what she broke, now is it?"

"We're debating punishment versus rehabilitation at this point, and that's practically a religious argument for how likely it isn't to be settled any time soon." Cap pointed out.

"And that just brings me to the root of my discontent!" Chase burst out. "How can a man as smart as you do somethin' so damn fool stupid as to get in a relationship with a-"

Cap gave Chase a very stern look. "Please find the politest way possible of phrasing what you're about to say." Cap said in a very polite voice while not quite smiling.

"… thief." Chase managed to bowdlerize his words.

"Former thief." Cap corrected politely.

"Be that as it may. You're stickin' your- you're settin' yourself up for disappointment. How can you not be aware of how this will end?" Chase ranted.

Cap exhaled heavily. "Why is giving her a chance so axiomatically wrong? As difficult as it is to imagine I actually have met people with worse trust issues than you, but only one of them."

"Last time I trusted someone like that my teammate died." Chase leaned over to whisper, mindful of Robert sitting in the adjacent cubicle. "You really want to know why I don't believe in this 'give a villain a second chance' bullshit? Because I saw that kind of thinkin' kill Robert's daddy with my own two eyes."

"I thought the second Mecha Man had been killed by Shroud." Cap replied hushedly.

"Damn right he was." Chase said. "And the reason Shroud got close enough is he was tryin' that whole 'Oh look, I might got emotional problems and a problematic past and all that but I'm tryin' to do good, come on, let me in, give me a chance'. Well, we gave him one, and just look what happened. I ain't ever buryin' any other good people again, not over my bein' stupid enough to repeat a mistake. People like that don't ever really change, and if you believe otherwise then you're an idiot."

"I used to be on an entire team of people who'd 'really changed' in ways you could barely imagine, myself included." Cap shook his head firmly. "But I'm between classes right now and you're working, so we don't have time for a lengthy debate. The advice I'd like from you is, if she is so locked in on not talking about it then what can I do next?"

"I'm tempted to say 'Have at her personnel file all the way down to the bottom', but if you ripped into her privacy like that then you'd be minus a girlfriend – and even if that's what I want, I ain't gonna set you up for that shit the sneaky way." Chase grumbled. "Outside of that… just read the cover sheet, I guess. Anything that'd be put on the general notice board for teammates to know about teammates should be fair game for you." He grunted. "I'll send an extract from her file, public domain info only, to your email. Maybe readin' even the outline bits will wise you up."

"Thank you." Cap said warmly. "Even if I don't agree with your opinion, I can still respect your honesty."

"Not much else a man can ask for beyond that." Chase nodded. "Now let me get back to work before we both get yelled at for goldbrickin'."

Cap straightened up and headed out with a nod, pausing briefly to look at Robert as he sat working in his cubicle. Frowning slightly at the expressionless mask of his face and the tension in the man's shoulders, Cap headed back to work.

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 27

Steve stood outside the door of Robert's apartment, whose address he'd gotten from Chase. The man had been in a visible funk ever since the failure of the last Astral Pulse test, and even Blazer hadn't been able to pull him out of it. And since Courtney had been swapped onto a weekend shift at the last minute their planned date for today was now a non-starter, so he'd fallen into some unexpected free time.

Steve acknowledged to himself that strictly speaking, this wasn't actually his business to stick his nose into quite this deeply. Still, Robert had been one of the first friends he'd made since coming here, and since everybody else was apparently being polite and giving the man his personal space and that wasn't working, then it fell on Steve Rogers to be the stubborn jackass in the equation.

Well, at least he was good at doing that.

A pair of vigorous knocks were met with only silence. "Robert?" Steve called out. "Your car's in your parking space, so I know you're home."

Several more knocks were met with nothing but stubborn silence. Steve sighed and eye-rolled, and then turned to go back outside and climb up to Robert's balcony… only to be surprised by the man coming up behind him in the hallway, holding a basket full of laundry.

"My car's here so I have to be inside the house, huh? I guess you don't always get it perfect, do you Captain?" Robert said sardonically.

"…a few SDN work shirts and a couple pairs of office pants? And a set of sweats?" Steve looked at the almost empty basket in mild shock. "That's your entire week's laundry?"

"It's called minimalism." Robert said wearily, as he unlocked his front door. Blocking Steve from entering or even seeing very much inside his apartment, Robert put his laundry basket down immediately inside the apartment, called out a greeting to the enthusiastic Beef who'd trotted over to greet his returning owner and get petted, and then reassured his pet dog as he gently pushed him away and closed and relocked the door. "Why are you here, Steve?"

"Well, I thought we were friends." Steve opened mildly. "And friends check in with friends when they notice one's going through a rough patch."

"I'm fine. I'm also busy." Robert said. "Thanks for stopping by-"

"It's almost eleven. Want to go get some lunch? My treat." Steve offered.

"I've, uh, already got something cooking-" Robert began, before Steve crossed his arms and just looked at him.

"Fine." Robert grumbled, and followed Cap sulkily to the elevator. "Where are we going? Health food place? Five-star restaurant?"

"Little diner I know. Family place." Steve said as they headed down. "You'll love it. I'm sure."

Robert grunted and endured the elevator ride in silence.

"We had a power-armor hero on my team back where I was from." Steve began as they were driving. "Not quite the same style as yours, but he put the same passion into building it."

"I didn't build mine. I inherited it." Robert muttered as he stared out the passenger window. "My father built it." he sighed. "I know how to keep it maintained, how the systems function, everything I needed to know to run it. But I need Royd's help to so much as manufacture updated components, and I don't even begin to know how to recreate the Astral Pulse." His fist clenched.

"And I get why that's frustrating." Steve agreed. "But you're starting to pass 'frustrated', and your friends are starting to worry."

Robert slammed his fist down on the armrest. "I fucked up and wasted everything two generations of Mecha Man before me all worked to earn! I pissed away my dad's legacy and spent fifteen years fighting the good fight and if I can't get my suit rebuilt then I'll have nothing to show for it! How the hell am I supposed to feel?" he shouted.

"I'm not even sure what you are feeling right now." Steve said. "You really believe that fifteen years isn't enough?"

"You gonna stop at fifteen years, Captain? I though Army retirement wasn't until at least twenty." Robert said cuttingly.

"Not voluntarily, no." Steve nodded. "But it wasn't voluntary for you either. You got busted up in a fight. There's no shame in not deploying again if you physically can't."

Robert snorted. "Easy for you to say."

"You really think you're the first guy in the world to suffer a career-ending injury?" Steve said. "You want me to drive you down to the VA hospital and show you an entire ward full of guys who'd give anything to be able to get back out there and finish their fight, except that they know they'll never be able to? Would you spit on any of them for being quitters?" Steve glared at him. "Because unless you really would do that, then you need to pull your head out of your fourth point of contact and stop spitting on your own efforts too."

"My fourth point of what?" Robert asked confusedly.

"Paratrooper term for your ass." Steve replied. "I was trying to be polite."

"Learn something every day." Robert muttered. "And… it's not the same, Cap. I got busted up because I screwed up."

"You know what the unofficial name of the Purple Heart is?" Steve asked him.

"Not a clue." Robert shrugged.

"We called it the 'You Forgot To Duck' medal." Steve joked. "Nobody remotely rational goes into a fight intending to get shot up. So unless you were deliberately trying to commit suicide, which I kinda doubt, why are you blaming yourself for what happened?"

"Because Shroud's trap was obvious as hell and I charged straight into it anyway." Robert snarled.

"Okay then, walk me through it." Steve asked simply. "Step by step."

Robert paused for a long while, before tonelessly continuing. "I'd gotten a tip on Shroud's location, and…"

Steve and Robert had to pause the superhero conversation for lunch, and spent the meal talking harmlessly about things like sports and cars. As soon as they exited the diner, Robert having settled down some with a full stomach of extra-rich home cooking, the informal debriefing continued.

Steve rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "We could quibble over details, but there's no point. Because the root of the issue here looks to be that if Shroud hadn't found one way to bait you in, then he'd have just found another. "

"Easy for you to say." Robert snorted. "I'm sure it's never happened to Captain Perfect Tactical Genius."

Steve shook his head. "The biggest case I worked – full-on alien invasion, if you believe it - there was a point early in the case where we got a chance to snag the big bad guy and his wonder gizmo while they were out doing some prep work. It was so easy that even then I got suspicious and said 'Hey, he practically gave himself up for free, What's going on?' And turned out, what was going on was Loki wanted to be held prisoner inside SHIELD's most secure base along with his gizmo being confiscated… so he could use its mind-control function to send our most powerful teammate rampaging completely berserk through the base and wreck it. Meanwhile, a whole team of his goons are busy following the emissions of the gizmo to find the place which otherwise they couldn't possibly have found. We had to scramble like hell just to stop the entire base from being trashed, and SHIELD lost dozens of agents and support crew. And our power-armor guy almost got fed face-first through a giant turbine and we were all banged up. And while all this is going on big bad guy just jailbreaks himself and reclaims his gizmo, and then skips merrily away while we're busy fighting like hell to save all our people. And so he gets to go into the endgame of his plan while being minus nothing except a few expendables, while we're down a lot of troops and assets we could otherwise have used for the finisher and starting from a lap behind as well. So you tell me, where'd we screw up?"

"You shouldn't have taken him back to your base." Robert said immediately.

"All right, so we don't do that." Steve agreed immediately. "Then where would we put him?"

"You-" Robert broke off. "Okay, this Loki guy had powers? Not just an armchair type?"

"By the standards of his homeworld he was kinda a lightweight, but on Earth? He was a bruiser." Steve nodded. "He straight-up beat me into the ground in our first battle. I had to double-team him with one of our heavy-hitters – our armor guy, actually – just to bring him in even when he was sandbagging, and when he was fighting for real it took our heaviest hitter to finally down him, and that only after he'd run a gauntlet of half the team during the big battle. So yeah, SHIELD's most secure base was the only place that had containment facilities that could possibly have held him. Which means that the instant we took him into custody there was only one possible next move, and Loki knew that. The only other choice would have been to just let him go free, and obviously we couldn't." Steve looked at Robert. "Just like you could never have let your father's killer walk away scott-free when you had a solid line on his location. Shroud did you to exactly what Loki did to us – set up a situation where it didn't matter how smart or dumb you played it because it would always end the same either way. Where your only other possible choice wasn't even really a choice."

"I shouldn't have gone in without backup." Robert stubbornly protested.

"What backup? You worked alone. No teammates, not even any regular team-ups." Steve shrugged. "There was nobody you could call on right away, and Shroud had deliberately set up the clue so that there was a time crunch. By the time you could have negotiated for support from some hero team or another you'd already have missed your window, and Shroud knew that too. It's easy to predict your opponent's next move when he's only got one direction he can possibly come from." Steve said.

"So you're saying I was just doomed?" Robert said.

"Show me a guy who's never taken a loss, and I'll show you a guy who's never really fought." Steve replied flatly. "You did your best, and it wasn't enough, and that sucks. And now you're afraid that you'll never get a second chance to try again. Now if it turns out you do then hell yeah, suit back up and do your best to give Shroud what he's got coming. But if you can't, then you still have a life to be proud of. You fought the good fight as long as you possibly could, and you went down swinging. And now you're honorably discharged. Nobody could ask you for more, and anybody who does is being completely unreasonable." Steve stared Robert directly in the eyes. "And that includes yourself."

"Can you look me in the eyes and tell me that if you were the one in my position – if you'd lost your powers – that you could be feeling any more upbeat than I'm not right now?" Robert asked haltingly.

"I'd hate it." Steve admitted. "Probably get on everybody's nerves with my pissing and moaning. My friends would have a chore and a half dragging me out of my funk." He exhaled heavily. "But they would." He looked up at Robert. "You know one of the things that makes me the most uncomfortable day-to-day? This." Steve tapped his own face. "My powers gave me such a boost in my looks – I think they call it a 'glow-up' nowadays – that I spend my whole life wondering how people would have reacted different if they'd met the old me. Sometimes I still don't feel like the guy I am now even is the 'real' me."

"Huh." Robert mused. "Yeah, I know someone else who has the same problem. Didn't expect to ever meet two people with it."

"And you'd better believe it gets in the way of my meeting girls, because then I really am never sure." Steve exhaled heavily. "Before Visi and I started dating I drew a picture of myself, how I used to look – and if you want a mental image, then think of somebody who makes Waterboy look as handsome as Flambae."

"Jesus Christ, really?" Robert gaped.

"Maybe I exaggerate a tiny bit, but not by much." Steve nodded. "Anyway, I showed Visi that picture… and she looked right at me and said that if she'd grown up in the same neighborhood as that guy she'd still have liked him, 'cause he looked like a real sweetheart." Steve smiled. "Only one other girl ever said the same thing to me and I've dated exactly two girls in my whole life. So yeah, if I lost my powers, I think I could still make it… because she'd still be there." Steve looked penetratingly at Robert. "And you didn't even meet Blazer until after you were already out of the suit. So you already know that it's Robert she likes, not Mecha Man."

"Did she put you up to this?" Robert asked gently.

"She has no idea I'm here this weekend." Steve said. "But yeah, I know that she tried to talk to you about this earlier, and that you shut her out. And Chase is worried about you too." He reached over and mimed a dope slap at Robert's head. "So stop doing that. If you're going to survive this without having some kind of breakdown, the only way you'll do that is if you let the people who care about you actually care about you."

"Okay, okay!" Robert protested. "Yeah, you're- you've given me a lot to think about."

"Want me to leave you to it, or do you want to go somewhere?" Steve asked.

"I've got to get back and take care of Beef, little guy's probably going crazy without his afternoon walkies." Robert said. "Thanks, Captain."

"Okay, I'll give you a ride." Steve nodded and they both stood up.

* * * * *

The barrage of laser fire tore into the helplessly coughing Invisigal… and then the illusion shattered to reveal that it had only been one of Prism's holo-decoys. The several energy-weapon armed goons immediately stopped firing and turned to look behind and around them, only for one of them to walk directly into Visi's kneecap as she materialized and threw it straight into his groin. The man doubled over in agony and Visi just faded out again before his two squadmates could turn around, and Prism took advantage of their distraction to step out from behind cover and temporarily blind them both with a laser burst, which blindness Invisigal then took advantage of to enthusiastically flatten them both.

"Punch Up know you're stealin' his favorite move?" Prism joked as the two heroines finished wrapping up the several armed robbers they'd caught attempting to break into an electronic parts warehouse. "And hey, you okay, Vis? Seems like you're workin' off a little extra frustration today."

"It's nothing." Visi protested as she efficiently went through the process of closing out the case and handing over their prisoners to the police. The laser rifles were evidence-tagged and marked for transport to the SDN facility for analysis and eventual reclamation.

"You swapped yourself onto weekend shift at the last minute when everybody knows what your original plans were, and now you're in a mood." Prism said. "That ain't nothin', that's 'you wanted some space from your boyfriend'. Okay, so maybe he did somethin' stupid. He's got a genetic condition called a Y chromosome, you just have to expect that kinda thing from time to time. Doesn't mean it's the end of the world."

"He didn't do anything!" Visi protested. "He- I just..." She trailed off.

"Just what?" Prism asked as they drove away.

"Just… wonder where we're going from here." Visi sighed. "Because sometimes... seriously, a girl like me, for a guy like him?" she trailed off.

"Girl, that man is crazy about you. He already knows what kind of place you came from and he just plain don't care. Way I read the tea leaves, the odds of him tradin' up off of you are about the same of Sonar's makin' GQ's Handsome Man of the Year cover." Prism assured her.

"Maybe he should." Visi muttered under her breath.

Prism just rolled her eyes. "If that's the kind of nonsense leavin' your mouth now then you are spiralin', girl. Snap out of it and just enjoy what you got, 'cause there's a million girls who'd envy you for it."

"So my odds are a million-to-one, is that what you're saying?" Visi gave Prism the side-eye. "Gee, thanks."

"You'll work it out." Prism said reassuringly. "As long as you both really want the same thing in the end, then everything else is just shit to get past."

"That would really be nice." Visi sighed as she looked out the car window. "But-"

"But me no buts." Prism cut her off. "Now for the important question. What you feelin' like for late lunch?"

"Burgers." Visi decided.

"Works for me." Prism agreed.

* * * * *

Author's Note: I keep telling myself I need to start making time progress, and my characters keep telling me that they want to stop and talk. Oh well, that gets you another chapter at least.

And here we see some people start to make progress and some people make… slightly less progress. Meanwhile, Cap continues his transition from street hero to full-time branch office training guy.

When I originally wrote this chapter I entirely didn't consciously realize that what Cap was having Visi do would trigger a massive flashback for her regarding the Mecha Man ambush and her guilt in it. But his doing that worked out so well for my plot that I totally rolled with it. My muse is always doing stuff like this subconciously and even I only figure out what I'm doing later.

The outline concept similarities between the original Mecha Man trap and what Loki pulls in the midgame of "Avengers' were not something I expected to write going in either, but as soon as I thought about 'what example could Cap make here?' things just leapt out at me.

And most of the Army stuff in this chapter I picked up from my dad, who actually had been in the Airborne. So yeah, they really called it that. *g*

cliffc999 · Jan 4, 2026

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 31

Between her having worked the entire weekend and then taking her comp time off all at once, it was Wednesday of next week before Steve saw Courtney again. They'd exchanged texts and a couple calls, of course, but Steve had thought it would probably be a bad idea to show up at her place uninvited.

"I want to apologize for last Friday." Cap began without preamble the instant he saw her arrive at SDN.

"Uh, Cap, it was just a little water." Visi deflected.

"Courtney." Steve said softly, after making sure nobody was near enough to hear them in the parking lot. "You didn't swap shifts to get put on the weekend and then take two days of comp right away instead of saving them up over 'a little water'. Something I did spooked you more than a little, and you really needed some space to process it… am I wrong?"

"Do we have to do this right now? Work's about to start." she begged off.

"If I did something that hurt your feelings that badly then yes, I really do need to apologize as soon as I can. And I've been thinking it over and I think I know what happened. Asking you to pretend to ambush heroes… that was like putting you back in villainy again, wasn't it? The part of your life that you didn't want to go back to?"

White-faced, Courtney nodded jerkily.

"So it's official, I'm an idiot." Steve criticized himself. "If I'd put an ounce of thought into it, I'd have asked you before-"

"Uh, you did ask me to do it, remember?" Courtney interrupted him exasperatedly. "You didn't order me, you said that you'd like my help trimming some heroic egos and I said yes." She sighed. "It didn't really sink in for me until after we'd done the demo and you were busy giving the post-game. Then I…" she trailed off.

"Wasn't able to get it out of your head?" Steve asked gently. "A bad experience you'd had before just got stuck in your brain once you went through something else that reminded you of it, and it kept replaying on loop no matter how hard you tried to hit 'stop'?"

"… yeah." she nodded slowly.

"That happened to me for a while after I get out of the ice." Steve agreed quietly. "Anything that reminded me too much of the cold or the plane crash and bam, I was back in the moment again even if I didn't want to be."

"You're saying that you think I've got PTSD?" Courtney looked at him askance.

"No, because that's a formal diagnosis and I'm not a psychologist." Steve replied matter-of-factly. "I am saying that I think something bad happened to you in the past and that I unknowingly ran you right over a trigger for it, and that I am so sorry that I did that. And I'm very carefully not asking you what happened, because if you wanted me to know then you'd tell me. But I won't ask you to do any villain demos again, not until you tell me it's all clear."

"The bad thing didn't happen to me." Courtney shook her head. "It was me."

"The key word is 'was'." Steve reassured. "You're not that person anymore."

Courtney held up both hands as if warding off invisible attackers, too overcome to speak.

"All right." Steve took an immediate step back. "If you need more time, then that's more important. Just... be a little kinder to yourself, please?"

Courtney's only reply was a brief, silent nod of her head.

* * * * *

The blast of flame arced downward through the air, forcing the supervillainess to hurriedly flinch back inside the vehicle and close the window.

"I've caught up to the armored car hijacking, but I cannot stop the truck!" Flambae called into his communicator as he flew furiously after the speeding car. "If I use enough flame to penetrate the armor then I set everything on fire!"

"Intersection's coming up." Robert's voice sounded in his headset. "Traffic's getting thicker up ahead, they'll have to turn. Can you block them out on the right so they go left?"

"Consider it done!" Flambae answered and laid down a furious barrage, concentrating on the truck's right side. Reflexively, the driver pulled away to the left, then course-corrected as he weaved around the several cars stopped at the intersection and screeched through a hurried left turn, barely missing an oncoming car.

"Left turn! Bank truck is on 5th, heading east!" Robert called. "Malevola, he's coming right at you!"

"I see him! Two blocks ahead!" Malevola acknowledged as she stood on her brakes and pulled her vehicle off to the side of the road. "Tell me when!"

"He'll be coming up to a clear patch right abouuut… now!" Robert called, and Malevola immediately vanished into one of her teleportals to re-appear barely ten feet ahead of the truck and a goodly step off to the left. With a flourish of her massive two-handed sword the muscular demoness put the full force of her back and arms into a low sweep, the blade held parallel to and barely two feet off the ground, and the infernal-forged metal slashed effortlessly through the left front tire of the armored car and into the truck body. Malevola teleported out just ahead of the armored car's furious lurch to the side as it skidded sideways and stalled out, leaving the bank truck robbers stranded.

"Knock knock!" Malevola called out cheerfully. "You're not going anywhere, so might as well pack it in."

The white-haired villainess leaping out of the passenger side of the truck answered only with a telekinetic blast, which Malevola parried with a brief flare of magic and a swing of her enchanted greatsword. Before they could fire again Flambae came down out of the sky with a diving dropkick directly between the psychic villianess' shoulderblades and sent her crashing heavily to the ground. With an amused sneer he turned and leveled a flaming hand in the direction of the open passenger side door of the bank truck.

"How would you prefer your jailbird to be cooked? Regular or extra crispy?" Flambae mocked.

The stretching villain still in the driver's seat of the truck immediately raised both hands in the air.

* * * * *

The gleaming superheroine soared gently down out of the sky, the twin-engined prop plane carefully supported in her arms. She brought the crashing plane she'd caught in mid-air down to a feather-light touchdown on the tarmac. As the only flying hero in the Torrance area with enough strength to carry an entire aircraft, she'd flown out as soon as the Mayday call had been forwarded to SDN by air traffic control.

"We need EMS now!" Blonde Blazer called out, and the waiting paramedics ran forward. She pulled open the cabin door on the pilot's side for them and they rapidly and efficiently helped the pale and sweating man down to the ground, laid him on the gurney, and began evaluating him. Almost immediately upon attaching the EKG leads, the lead paramedic tapped his microphone.

"Central, this is Rescue 55 at the airport, we have a myocardial infarction in progress. Starting IV and oxygen now, tell Torrance General our ETA is eight minutes." He looked up at Blonde Blazer, who by this point had helped the almost-as-pale and shaking passenger down from their seat. "Bring her over here, let us look at her."

"I think she's just in shock, but we have to check." Blazer agreed as she helped the ill pilot's wife over to the paramedics, who after a brief look-over agreed that she was probably fine.

"Okay, tell the crash investigators we're taking both of them to Torrance General." the head paramedic nodded to the nearest airport security officer as they loaded the gurney into the ambulance. "Ma'am, your husband is having a heart attack from what I can determine, but we were able to reach him almost immediately and his heart is still beating, he's just not quite getting enough blood flow. They'll be able to tell you more at the hospital but for right now his life is not in immediate danger, especially not that he's now on oxygen."

"You did an excellent job keeping the plane still in the air until I could get there, despite not knowing how to fly." Blazer reassured the worried woman. "And in cutting the engines on cue when they told you to. You saved his life, and your own."

"You saved his life. Thank God you were there." The pilot's wife reached over and tearfully hugged Blonde Blazer, leaving her blushing.

"Time to go!" the lead paramedic smiled as he helped the woman up, and the ambulance doors closed and they pulled away with a blare of sirens.

Blonde Blazer stood enduring the applause of the circle of airport employees and security helping secure the crash site for the investigators for a long moment, gave them a grateful smile and nod as acknowledgement, and then took to the air.

"I've been stuck in the office too long." she muttered to herself as she flew back to the SDN branch HQ.

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 32

"The worst thing I hate about this damned fool crazy idea of Blazer's is that it doesn't actually have the 'fool' part to complain about." Chase grumbled as he led Sonar towards the empty cubicle where a pile of paperwork had been set up.

"Hey, she had a point." Sonar replied. "They really are burying her under a pile of paperwork nonsense that keeps her too busy to do the important stuff, so I'd produce more overall for the office spending some of my hours every week here helping clear the backlog while she focuses on strategic concerns than I would spending them out on calls. Just, uh, this still counts for my performance evaluation, right?"

"You don't need to explain it back to me, I ain't a damn idiot." Chase grumbled. "And if you ran a tech start-up once you damn sure should be able to do admin work this relatively simple. Just remember that nothing that actually involves financial authorizations can be done without either her or my signature. Not that anything like that should even be in that pile anyway."

"I'm literally on probation for financial fraud, that's a perfectly reasonable limitation." Sonar said agreeably, and Chase grunted noncommittally. "So, let's see what we've got to start wi- 'Request for feasibility study for proposal? Is this a joke? What's next, asking me to put a cover on the TPS report?" Sonar continued incredulously.

"Welcome to SDN corporate side." Chase nodded with weary sardonicism. "Hope you enjoy the tour."

"Is it my job to actually help do this crap, or to come up with excuses that get her out of doing it?" Sonar asked seriously.

"You manage to pull off that second miracle and I'm pretty sure she'd kiss you full on the mouth if she didn't already have a boyfriend." Chase snorted.

* * * * *

Golem's furious blow at the amorphous villain was absorbed harmlessly by their own amorphous body. The magically animated living clay was stalemating entirely against a walking humanoid blob composed out of some type of dark-reddish semi-transparent gel, Golem's greater strength proving of little use against the gel villain's ability to essentially ignore blunt force.

Several of the team of thugs backing the blob-villain up continued a steady and merciless laser fire against Prism and Golem, distracting him and forcing her back and away from the loading dock as the remainder of their team continued to swiftly yet efficiently load the truck. Dressed in tight black hooded skinsuits glowing with menacing red highlights, judging by how easily they tossed fully-loaded pallets of electronic parts into the back of their panel van the thugs all seemed to have some type of mild strength enhancement of their own. The last of the pallets was loaded and the remaining thugs turned to add their volume of fire to their compatriots', forcing both heroes even further back.

"Prism, you've got to take out at least one of the tires before they- GRENADE!" Robert called away as he was watching the action through their headsets, and Golem immediately broke away from his opponent to interpose himself between Prism and the grenades that two of the thugs had thrown in unison. The blob-villain flinched away just as the grenade detonated, and while Golem harmlessly absorbed the blast the smoke and fragments kicked up by the detonation still provided enough cover for the bad guys to finish getting into the truck. Prism's last desperate attempts to take out a tire with her own laser blast were intercepted by the blob-villain who was clinging to the rear of the truck on the outside, and easily stretched pieces of their own amorphous self down to shield the tires as they peeled away.

"Shit! We struck out!" Prism cursed. "Any of the fliers able to come in? 'Cause we ain't catchin' that thing in Golem's slow-ass flatbed!"

"They're heading towards the slum area of Torrance. I don't have enough traffic camera coverage there to keep a lock on them, and by the time anybody else could get there they'd be aerial searching for one anonymous panel van out of how many?" Robert sighed. "We'll try anyway, but it doesn't look good. Anyway, good hustle out there you two, but sometimes you can do nothing wrong and still lose. Close out the incident and resume patrol."

"Will do." Golem grunted. "Hey, Prism. Didn't the guys you and Visi fought last weekend also have laser guns?"

"You know, that they did." Prism wondered out loud. "And I swear I saw the same red-glowin' colors on those goons as well as these. You think maybe we got a new gang in town, and they tryin' to make their mark?"

"Might be." Robert agreed. "We'll look into it, and when the senior staff knows more we'll put out the word. Right now…"

"Yeah." Golem nodded. "Back to work."

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 33

"This is Visi." She spoke softly into her mike as she moved rapidly yet quietly down the datacenter's hallway. "We've got two people down on the second floor."

"Cops have the first floor secure. Any idea on what we're getting into yet?" Robert's voice filled her headset as she worked on bandaging the puncture wounds on the fallen guards.

"Only that whoever it is likes to stab people." Visi muttered. "No gunshots, and same knife did all these wounds. Looks like they're not out to kill, though, just disable, or else these guys would already be dead."

"I can't quite place that M.O… any sign they're still there?" Robert asked.

"Won't know that for sure until after I check out the whole building… this time." Visi joked roughly. "OK, got 'em both stable and at the top of the stairwell for the first responders to pick up. Going silent."

"Good luck."

Visi faded into invisibility and began a hurried search circuit of the second floor of the local Torrance node of one of LA County's larger Internet service providers, looking for the cause of all this. The 911 call had come in when reports of an active shooter had gone out from the ISP's office. Security had immediately evacuated the building, but several guards had failed to check in, and the Torrance PD had called for SDN assistance in scouting the situation before they sent in entry teams.

A fast swing around the upper-floor corridor, with brief stops in occluded locations to replenish oxygen, turned up no results.

"This is Visi, and it's like I'm chasing a ghost up here. Whoever it is legitimately knows how to move quietly, which trust me, most people don't. But- shit." Visi's blood chilled. "Robert, I've got an access door forced open here. The reason nobody on the first floor noticed anything before the noise started is because our perp entered from the roof."

"Which means this probably isn't a random event, not if a superpowered person is doing it and it's not a blind rampaging type. And if you break into a datacenter with a purpose, then you probably want to hack something."

"The actual servers are in the basement. Where's the best terminal for hacking into them that's up here?" Visi asked.

"Most likely the one in the IT chief's office. Which is on the northwest corner of the building." Robert replied.

"On my way." Visi said and headed off, her heart already sinking. She peered around the corner of the open door invisibly, and the sight of the winged woman standing tautly in the office staring at the door with several throwing knives in her hands, guarding some type of sophisticated electronic device that had been spliced into the main terminal, only confirmed her already-strong suspicion.

"Coupe?" she called softly from out in the hallway, staying just out of sight around the corner of the door jam. "It's Visi." On the other end of the line, Robert swore incredulously as he picked up every word from Visi's open mike.

"Invisigal." Coupe replied coldly. "Fitting, that the first one of you I meet again should be the one who usurped my place."

"We don't have to do this, Coupe. I don't want to do this." Visi pleaded. "You haven't killed anyone yet. You didn't even seriously injure those guys, even if they're probably gonna be a little upset. You can still make a deal and not go back to jail-"

"Liar." Coupe spat. "None of you really cared. None of you really helped."

"Punch Up's really sorry he didn't do more." Visi tried to explain. "But he thought that I'd already lost. And right up until the very last minute, I had already lost. So please don't ruin your life just because I had more luck than you one time."

"I'm not ruining my life, I'm reclaiming it. Because it turns out that other life was just an illusion." Coupe glared hatefully at the door, as she reached down with one hand to grab one of the office chairs and shove it so it rolled on its coasters across the carpet to come to a step almost in the doorway.

"Good thinking." Visi complimented her. "But I'm not trying to sucker punch you, honest. Look, I'm showing myself." An entirely visible Invisigal came slowly around the corner of the doorframe, her hands empty and open in front of her.

Coupe's one hand reflexively twitched back into throwing position. "Why shouldn't I just put this in your throat right now?"

"You mean try to put it there." Visi replied evenly. "But if you really wanted to, you'd already be trying."

"Shit, I'm trying to get Punch Up patched in but he's busy on a rescue job right now- Visi, put me on speaker." Robert decided, and then continued speaking after she pushed the button on her communicator. "Coupe, it's Robert. Your being cut was an injustice. We said that at the time, I'll say it again now. But that was weeks ago, and the whole situation's changed with corporate. Torrance branch can show legitimate improvement, we can argue the cut was unnecessary-"

"Stop lying to me!" Coupe flared. "None of you even tried to reach out before! You're saying this now only because you only want to trick me!"

"What?" Robert said confusedly. "We tried-"

The red light on the device wired to the sysadmin's terminal turned green, and Coupe's eyes flickered to the side. "It's done." Coupe said softly, bringing her free hand up to touch what Visi could now see was a communicator earpiece. "I've got Invisigal here in a face-off. Instructions?"

"Coupe, please-" Visi begged.

Coupe flung her hands forward, releasing a barrage of her shadow-knives. Visi dove to the side just ahead of the knives, and in the moment of opportunity that bought her Coupe triggered the self-destruct on the hacking device she'd spliced in. Moving without a single wasted motion she reached down, picked up the sysadmin's Steelcase reinforced computer chair, and threw it directly through the office window. By the time Visi could get into the room Coupe had already leapt out the exit she'd just improvised and was flying into the distance.

"This is Flambae. I am responding, but Coupe has over a mile's head start on me… and she is a faster flier than I am." the flaming hero's voice broke in on comms.

"Break off." Robert ordered. "There's little point… and given that she's obviously working for someone new, if you did catch up to her by yourself then you might be flying right into an ambush. Visi, secure and tag what's left of the gizmo and get permission from the cops to bring it back for Royd to look at. It's the only clue we really have right now."

"What the flamin' green Hell was that shite you told me she said about none of us reachin' out? I'd called her enough times that weekend to practically qualify as a stalker!" Punch Up's own frustration sounded across teamchat as he finally managed to reach his own communicator.

"Apparently, none of our attempts to communicate actually reached her." Cap's own voice came in on the net. "And we already know that whoever Coupe is working with now, they can build a nice hacking gizmo."

"What, you think someone might have hacked her phone?" Robert realized. "So that she'd be vulnerable to recruitment?"

"If you want to compromise someone, then a good first move is to get a wedge between them and their support system." Cap replied. "Isolation is vulnerability."

"… yeah, I guess it might be." Visi mused, as she stood staring out the smashed-open window at the horizon.

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 34

"Proto-Pulse Test 11. Pilot ready." Robert said tautly, as he warmed up his control panel. It was Saturday morning, and the extensive rebuild and rewiring of the Mecha Man armor in preparation for the latest test had taken almost all week.

"Here we go." Royd took a deep breath and entered a series of commands into his own control panel, and Robert began the start-up sequence.

"Sync rate stable. Reaction hot." Royd noted as they went through the initial series of checks. "Robert? How it look?"

"No surges yet, no brownouts." Robert replied, smiling at the readings. "It held stable all through the locomotion checks."

"Hokay, now come da first real challenge." Royd nodded. "De weapon systems test."

"Fire control hot. Primary weapons power bus hot. " Robert acknowledged. "We'll start with the energy blade…"

A clench of the Mecha Man's armor's fist brought a gleaming blade of pure force out of the back of its hand, in what was proportionally-sized as a longsword blade for the armor but which would have been beyond a greatsword for a human-sized wielder.

"Yes!" Robert celebrated. "Usage test..." He brought the sword blade high and then swung it crashing down into a nearby slab of thick sheet metal laying on a test stand. The metal effortlessly fell apart into two neat pieces, the edges glowing with the heat… and then a brilliant series of sparks shot out of Mecha Man's wrist and the sword blade vanished, and the entire arm jerked spasmodically. "Shit!" Robert swore, immediately letting go of the control stick and punching the emergency shutdown. "Royd? What happened?"

"Power surge. Again." Royd said resignedly. "De Proto Pulse sync rate went from steady at one-one to suddenly spiking way out of nowhere, and even de surge protectors and capacitor bank… dey be overwhelmed right away. We going to have to replace de entire blade assembly."

"I'm sorry, Robert." Blazer said softly from where she stood in the visitor's gallery. "It really looked like it was going to work this time."

"… it almost did." Robert acknowledged after a long pause, and then he opened the armor and climbed out. "But hey, this is the first time we've had one of those power surges where it didn't cascade through all the armor systems. The new fault-isolation network we came up with is actually doing its job."

"Dat it is. And we never got one of de prototype pulses dis far into de test sequence either. De blade might be de lowest power weapon system, but it still draw way more surge power den de myomer servos." Royd smiled.

"So… at least a little progress. Which definitely beats the alternative." Robert nodded back, and then stepped forward to accept Blazer's hug.

"So we'll have something to celebrate tonight." she smiled encouragingly at her boyfriend.

"One more thing to celebrate." Robert nodded affectionately. "Because even before this test I already had at least one."

Cap and Visi both smiled down at the other heroic couple at SDN from where they were standing behind Royd, and Cap and Robert exchanged a manly nod over Blazer's shoulder.

* * * * *

Author's Note: I am still sweating how the hell I'm going to write the big superhero battle spectacle that needs to come in as the closer, because every time I try to write a big dramatic superfight it just keeps turning into swift, efficient, tactical takedowns. Man, comic-book writers have harder jobs than I'd thought.

Some of the dispatch missions in the game make no sense. Like, the 'falling plane' event is one of the dispatches in episode 5… but how the hell is anyone in the office actually supposed to deal with it? Only two of the Z-Team fly and neither of them can either pilot the aircraft or catch the plane. There's only one hero in town who could. And logically, Blazer really should deploy occasionally on major casualty incidents earlier, as opposed to needing the entire city to be on fire before she even starts. That's a gameplay artifact, I'm sure. But I'm writing a story, not a game, so I don't have to.

Dispatch is a great game but occasionally you can see the seams showing that remind you that it was trapped in development hell for a while, had its first backer ditch halfway through, and was finished by devs volunteering unpaid time, massive crunch, and the intervention of the Critical Role team in finding them some new funding and contributing their own VAs. So you get parts that feel unfinished and you just have to mentally patch over, as I'm doing now.

It is amusing to realize that the most valuable contribution Sonar can make with his man-hours is not his superpowers in the field but his business experience, to help deal with Torrance branch's canon… I can't say 'mismanagement', but I can say mediocre management. Apparently in-game we're supposed to believe that Blonde Blazer is just not that good at it, but while I'm willing to stretch as far as 'not exceptionally business talented', I am not even going to try and stretch as far as 'she's actually incompetent'. And hence my own fudging that it's an issue of relative inexperience, not having any assistant (or budget for one) to delegate to, and stupid corporate paperwork dumping all combining to leave her a little snowed under.

Coupe finally reappears… and yes, Shroud is indeed that much of a colossal dickwaffle.

But hey, at least some people are at least starting to do better, so that's something.

cliffc999 · Jan 4, 2026

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 34

Steve Rogers finished stirring the pot sitting on the electric stove in the apartment's tiny kitchen, and took one last spoonful and sniff to check the taste. He sighed in satisfaction. "Dumplings are ready."

"Finally!" Courtney teased from where she was sitting at the small countertop in-between the kitchen and living area that served as a dining room table. "I think I grew a gray hair over here waiting."

"One home-cooked meal, just as promised." Steve said as he finished ladling the chicken dumpling stew into two large bowls. Removing his apron, he carried them over to the countertop and sat down. It was the evening of the same day that they'd attended the proto-pulse test, and Steve and Courtney had decided to celebrate the almost-one-month anniversary of their having originally met each other with a nice dinner at his place.

"Mmph!" Courtney moaned in satisfaction through her stuffed cheeks. "Delshus." she mumbled.

"Old family recipe." Steve smiled slightly in reminisce. "Mrs. Barnes used to cook this all the time. When I got old enough to use a stove, she showed me how."

"Barnes? You were adopted?" Courtney asked.

"No, no. My dad died before I was born – in World War I, actually – but my mom didn't pass away until I was grown up. But she had to work shifts at the hospital late sometimes, so a lot of the time I ate dinner at the neighbors'." Steve explained. "I'd known her son Bucky for years and years, so Mrs. Barnes was used to having me over."

"Okay, I've gotta ask. 'Bucky'?" Courtney grinned. "They actually named people that back then?"

"On his birth certificate it was James Buchanan Barnes, but since his dad was also called James you can guess what happened there." Steve chuckled.

"Not really hard, no." Courtney smiled and kept eating.

"This is nice." Steve continued after a couple minutes of just enjoying the food. "And I'm glad you came over. I was kinda afraid you were still mad at me."

"I wasn't ever mad at you." Courtney explained patiently. "I just… have stupid coping mechanisms sometimes." She looked up at him ruefully over her dripping spoon. "You live alone for long enough and also have a superpower for vanishing, then your easiest way of dealing with uncomfortable shit becomes running."

"I get it." Steve nodded. "But once you start running, it gets kinda hard to let yourself stop."

"Tell me about it." Courtney sighed. "But you… you weren't ever the running kind, were you?"

"No." Steve admitted. "And that got me beat up in practically every back alley in Brooklyn. If I had a nickel for every time Bucky had to get his knuckles skinned up bailing me out of another fight before they had to carry me out on a stretcher, I'd be richer than Tony. So… sometimes I look back and I wonder. I was brave, yeah, but was it right for me to drag him into that much trouble on my behalf? Because he'd never have needed to get into any of those fights unless it were for me. Seriously, he was the toughest kid in the neighborhood. Nobody messed with him if they had any sense at all."

"Did he ever complain?" Courtney asked simply.

"Not once." Steve shook his head.

"How'd you meet him?" Courtney continued.

"Mom had just moved into the neighborhood. First week I'm there, some punk kid tells me to hand over my lunch money or else he'll take it off of me. And since I never had the sense to stay out of trouble I just run my mouth right back at him-" Steve began.

"Hold up. You, Mister Self-Control incarnate, ran an automatic mouth?" Courtney said incredulously.

"Oh, I was incorrigible." Steve agreed. "I didn't start getting a lock on my mouth until after the serum. After I got powers then picking fights with people would've been bullying. But when I was the underdog?" Steve rolled his eyes gently. "Seriously. Every back alley in Brooklyn."

"So you ran your mouth back at a bully, and…?" Courtney continued knowingly.

"I got pasted." Steve nodded. "I had my fists up and I was trying, but I wasn't getting any licks in. And if I did manage to get any in then I wasn't doing enough damage to wake up a sleeping kitten. So soon enough I'm down on the ground and he's about to start putting in the boots, and suddenly this other kid comes flying in and lays the bum out with one punch. He bends down to ask me if I'm all right, and-" Steve laughed softly at himself. "And I'm sitting there with a fat lip and a shiner I can barely see out of one eye with, completely out of wind, and the first thing out of my mouth is 'I had 'em on the ropes.'"

Courtney laughed until she snorted. "You were hopeless."

"And Bucky looks back down at me and laughs, and the first thing he says back to me is 'I guess you did.' And from that moment on we were inseparable."

"After you went into the ice, did he have a good life?" Courtney asked, and then winced in distress at Steve's expression.

"Bucky didn't wait to be drafted, he joined the Army right after Pearl Harbor. I tried to join up with him, but I already told you about my health." Steve shrugged. "Tried several times, actually. I told you about Dr. Erskine waivering me. I didn't tell you that I originally came to his attention because he'd wondered why a kid who had maybe half the disqualifying physical conditions in the manual had lied on his enlistment forms five separate times trying to sneak or beg his way past the physical."

"You falsified government documents? You?" Courtney goggled.

"And each attempt was a Federal crime potentially chargeable as perjury." Steve agreed. "Said so right on the fine print at the bottom of the form." He chuckled. "I always wondered why people in the modern-day always believed the fable that I was 100% incapable of telling even the littlest white lie, when it was public record how I'd originally gotten noticed by the project."

"I don't even understand how that works. Wouldn't getting caught trying to fake your way in get you failing a security clearance, not earning one?" Courtney puzzled.

"What Dr. Erskine had originally been looking for when he'd been going through the medical reports from the induction centers was exceptional physical specimens, yeah, not guys like me." Steve admitted. "I was just a pattern that happened to catch his eye. And since I also happened to be in the induction center the day he was there he took a moment out to indulge his curiosity and talk to me about why the heck was I was even doing this. I didn't even know he was part of any project until after he introduced himself, I originally thought he was just one of the Army doctors working there." Steve looked briefly into the distance, reminiscing. "He wanted to know why I was so desperate to get over there and start killing Nazis. I told him that I didn't want to kill anyone but that I didn't like bullies, and I didn't care where they were from." Steve looked across the counter at her. "But you were originally asking about Bucky. And the real reason I was so desperate to get in the Army was that I didn't want him to go over there alone."

"And?" Courtney drew Steve out gently.

"I got taken up by the project, and then picked to be the candidate." Steve said. "So there I was, America's first super-soldier… and then the only one, because a Nazi spy assassinated Dr. Erskine the day I was injected. Stole the last sample of the serum as well, then smashed it before letting us recapture it. I don't know why they didn't have any backup records or if something had happened to them, they didn't ever explain that part to me, but I was intended to be a prototype and then I was the only one."

"So they sent you over there by yourself?"

"Nope. Put me on a USO tour to go sell War Bonds. I'd show off my superpowers in public for morale purposes and do a whole song and dance, while they were implying there were other guys like me secretly over there doing commando stuff without actually having to tell that lie out loud. Which is actually why I've got the flag costume instead of something more tactical, it was originally from a propaganda tour. I just kept wearing it after it started to mean something else." Steve explained.

"War Bonds tour? No wonder you hate the PR fluff stuff SDN tries to make the A-Team do so much." Courtney laughed.

"The really funny thing is I can't even honestly say it was a waste of time." Steve huffed amusedly. "During the months I was on the tour War Bonds sales were up five percent overall. And that was real money, even in 1940s dollars."

"Yeah, all the extra bullets that much money would buy? That was probably a hundred times as much damage to the German army as you did personally." Courtney acknowledged.

"I don't know, I did a lot of damage." Steve joked. "But yeah, looking back I couldn't even say they were wasting me. The decision made sense from a logistical standpoint. I just hated it. Pretending to be a hero when I hadn't so much as gotten within five thousand miles of the enemy… it drove me nuts. And then they sent Captain Phoney overseas to do a morale tour for the real combat troops, which was maybe the stupidest idea anybody had ever had in the history of the Army." Steve looked down. "And I got over there just in time to find out that Bucky's unit, which was in the area - we were up by Azzano during the Italian campaign then - had been lost behind enemy lines and he was a POW in a Nazi base too heavily defended to try and raid."

Courtney drew a pained breath, and then her eyes went wide as Steve continued without a beat. "So of course I went completely out of my mind, convinced a couple people I knew to help me steal a plane and a parachute, and jumped in all by myself to try and do a one-man POW rescue."

"Every back alley in Brooklyn, huh?" Courtney eventually snarked.

"Remember back at the donut shop, when I said that you wouldn't believe some of the orders I'd disobeyed even if I'd told you?" Steve grinned back at her. "So yeah, the base turned out to be an experimental facility run by the Nazi mad science division, HYDRA. Which, as it happened, had also been experimenting with the super-soldier serum. Dr. Erskine had originally been a defector from there before he made it over to try perfecting his serum for the US instead, and the Nazis had a guy who'd also been injected with an earlier version of it. Johann Schmidt, aka the Red Skull. HYDRA's commanding officer." Steve looked grave. "He's where Dr. Erskine had learned that psychological stability was really important for serum recipients, because Schmidt had already been off his nut even before getting juiced. And afterwards he was so far gone that he made Hitler look well-adjusted. The serum magnifies everything, you see. Good becomes better, and bad becomes worse." He breathed out. "Anyway, I can't even begin to take the whole base by myself, superpowers or not… but I don't have to. They've got like several hundred guys held prisoner there, including Bucky, and as soon as I started to bust them out they all grabbed what weapons they could and then we started the biggest damn riot you ever saw. That's why they'd all been sent to the HYDRA base from the regular POW camps in the first place. They'd been troublemakers."

"How'd you get back?" Courtney asked.

"Walked." Steve answered simply. "Took us a couple days, but we made it back across the lines and to our unit. And after they decided not to court-martial me, I finally got my combat posting. I was already a captain – they'd directly commissioned me for propaganda purposes, even if I made sure to actually get the officer training as well – so they put me in charge of a new special company, the Howling Commandoes. Our mission was to go up against HYDRA and all their mad science projects. They gave me free choice of any men I wanted for it. Bucky was the first guy I picked, and the men who'd broken out of the POW camp with us were the rest."

"So you finally got your wish, to fight alongside him." Courtney smiled.

"I did." Steve smiled, before his face fell. "And I brought the Howlers through the war practically intact. We lost only one man in action in the entire war, a record no other combat unit equaled." Steve's expression told Courtney everything she needed to know.

"Bucky." She nodded sadly. "Steve, I'm so sorry."

"It was on the next-to-last mission of the war, the one before we finally took down Schmidt and his last base… and I went into the ice." Steve continued softly. "We were basically doing a train robbery, only the 'robbery' was to capture Dr. Zola, Schmidt's chief scientist. We needed him alive to find the base. There was a fight on the train-" Steve shook his head, visibly waving away the details. "And Bucky fell off the train to his death, saving my dumb ass in a fight one last time."

Courtney got up and crossed over to give Steve a hug, and the two of them silently reassured each other for a long moment.

"He never regretted a thing." Courtney finally said. "I'm as sure of that as I can be of anything."

"I know." Steve sighed. "Still miss him, though."

"Of course you do." she agreed.

Steve and Courtney both got up to put their empty dishes in the sink and then moved to the couch, where they sat down side by side with their arms around each other.

"I… really wish I'd had a Bucky, growing up. Or a Mrs. Barnes. Or a Steve Rogers." she continued reluctantly.

"Rough?" Steve asked simply.

"Not quite Great Depression rough." Courtney answered slowly. "But yeah, we were poor. Bad neighborhood. Parents that had to work all the time just to make ends meet, latch-key kid. And, of course, health problems."

"Living not knowing when even a simple game of tag is gonna knock you down into a crisis isn't fun even if you can afford all the doctors in the world." Steve agreed. "And I definitely couldn't. If my mom hadn't been a nurse I don't think I'd have lived to grow up."

"My mom was a waitress." Courtney answered. "Dad did day labor when he could get it, moped around doing nothing when he couldn't. And money was tight enough that they hated every dollar of it they had to waste on the sick kid."

"They actually use the word 'waste'?" Steve asked mildly. "Or was that just you?"

"Them." Courtney answered knowingly. "Went on and on about how things were tight enough under normal circumstances, and how losing so much time from work taking me to the free clinic and the ER was only making it worse and why couldn't I just get in shape and stop being so lazy or something."

"That's not how it works." Steve moaned. "Which of course you knew that."

"No I didn't." Courtney shook her head. "Not back then. I mean, what the heck do little kids know except what their parents tell them?"

Steve hugged her a little more tightly and let her stop and find her own pace. "That when you started stealing? To try and help your family's ends meet?" he eventually asked sympathetically.

"No." Courtney shook her head, and then gave an embarrassed chuckle. "Would you believe that I actually went to Catholic school?"

Steve looked down at his girlfriend, particularly at her punk haircut and nose ring, and chuckled. "Only if I indulged in thinking about a very tacky stereotype."

Courtney snorted once. "Yeah, I know. Girl from traditional upbringing goes complete punk rebel after becoming disillusioned in childhood. That one's fresh off the typecasting stereotype platter." She looked downcast. "But no. Stealing was wrong, and if you worked hard and stayed honest then eventually it would all work out. Just like they taught in school and you saw in the movies."

"Except for you, it didn't." Steve acknowledged the obvious.

"I found out I had invisibility powers when I was fourteen." she continued. "And I didn't really use them for anything. I mean, I have to hold my breath to use them, and putting strain on my lungs was something I tried to avoid then. But, I did tell the few friends I had about them." She lookd downcast. "At least, I thought they were my friends."

"Weirded them out?" Steve probed gently.

"Freaked them out. Completely." she said. "From that moment on I was the neighborhood witch. In the historical sense, as in 'non-traditional female who was the superstitious community scapegoat for everything that went wrong'. House cat got lost? Blame the invisible girl. Can't find your wallet? Of course she stole it. Car wouldn't start? She must have sabotaged it. You name it and I caught the blame for it. Even if two dozen people had seen me in class while it was going on."

"From your setup I expected some pretty rough stuff, and I am still disappointed in those people." Steve declared firmly.

"So I just pulled into my shell and started avoiding people entirely. I had books and TV and movies, I had exams to study for… a college scholarship to try and earn… and a whole neighborhood to escape." she mourned. "I didn't get beat up in back alleys – girls do bullying differently than boys, and since they already knew I could turn invisible I could just use my powers to leave any conversation I didn't want to stay in. But it sucked." she breathed out explosively.

"Loneliness always does." Steve agreed. "Solitary confinement is used as a punishment in every human culture, no matter how different they are otherwise. And has been for all of known history."

"I know." Courtney agreed. "And finally I'm coming up on graduation, and I've busted my hump and gotten those straight A's… it's not like I had a vigorous social life to distract me from my studying… and then I get turned down in favor of the girl who's next in class. Because she could get a letter of recommendation from the school, you see, and I couldn't." She blinked away angry tears. "Not a single teacher would stand up for me, because all they'd heard for years was accusation after accusation and not a single person standing up for me. And you can't ever have that much smoke without a real fire, right?"

"That was really not very Christian of them." Steve said angrily.

"Catholic school was grade school, high school was the local PS." Courtney corrected him. "Anyway, that was it. I wasn't going to college, I couldn't hope to get even a job waiting tables anywhere in the neighborhood what with being the local pariah, and my folks were going to throw my 'freeloader' ass out on the street without a dime in my pocket. I'd done everything right, I'd played by the rules as hard as I could, and in the end I had nothing to show for it. Everybody agreed that I just had to be a thief and a liar and a backstabbing bitch even when I hadn't done any of that, just because of what my powers were."

"And suddenly everything you said to Robert that day makes a whole lot more sense." Steve realized.

"Yup." Courtney nodded. "So after that I was just fucking done with trying to be the good girl. If everybody wanted the invisible bitch so badly then they could fucking have her, and I'd ram it down all their throats and make 'em choke. Went right out and stole my first thing the day the guidance counselor told me I was getting bounced, and never looked back." She slumped. "And here's me with all this quitter talk after you had all the hard knocks growing up too, and went straight from zero to hero without a bump. You must be really fuckin' disappointed in me."

"Nope." Steve shook his head. "Not a bit."

"I hate it when you do that, you know." Courtney looked up at him plaintively. "When you make excuses for me that you never would for yourself. That's just… reminding me that I'm not really a hero."

"Nonsense." Steve gave her a comforting squeeze. "Being easier on the people you care for than you are on yourself is called caring for people. It's just what you do for the people you- you're close to. It's what you're supposed to do, even if your folks never did." He sighed. "Is that why it says 'Courtney Jane Doe' on your personnel file?"

"You've read my file?" Courtney looked at him alarmedly.

"Just the public-facing parts that anybody in the office is allowed to." Steve reassured her.

"Yeah. It is." she admitted. "My genetic donors ditched me without a second thought. So screw them. I won't even take the family name from 'em, let alone anything else." She laughed once, bitterly. "Not that they ever gave me much else."

"I didn't have it as rough as you did." Steve said. "I had my mom. I had Bucky and his folks. I had other decent people in what was a pretty decent neighborhood… sure, we were as poor as church mice, but we were mostly traditional people. Old-fashioned community spirit, like they don't have as much of anymore."

"Damn sure didn't where I lived." Courtney admitted.

"Courtney, I don't look down on you for hitting the wall like you did." Steve reassured. "You had no support at all, and you were just a kid. If I'd grown up without a mom who cared about me, a brother in all but blood, other grown-ups who set good examples, then there's no guarantee that I'd still be me. I might've just ended up this bitter little punk with barely any good in him at all, assuming I wasn't dead." Steve exhaled heavily. "Chase believes that people are born good or bad, but that's nonsense. The hero team I was with during that alien invasion I mentioned once, the Avengers… yeah, we'd literally saved the world. But our members were a billionaire playboy who'd lived out every celebrity scandal you could think of before he finally turned his life around after surviving a terrorist attack and figuring out there was more to life than just money and girls and booze. A Norse god-"

"Seriously?" Courtney goggled.

"We work with a half-demon who actually commutes to Hell, or so she says, so don't judge." Steve poked affectionately at her. "A Norse god whose dad had actually had to exile him to Earth without his powers to learn humility, because he'd been apparently been an arrogant enough jackass back home he had to be kicked out of the house just to keep the peace... and who did learn his lesson, became one of the most honorable people I'd ever met, and got his powers back. A man who got cursed with a transformation into an uncontrollable monster and got nothing but hunted by the government for it as the entire world told him he was a monster… and who decided that he'd rather fight as hard as he could to teach the monster inside him how to help people, and who did. And two secret agents, one of whom was a defected assassin who had more kills than Coupe under uglier circumstances before she grew up enough to decide that wasn't the person she wanted to be and she'd spend the rest of her life trying to help people to make up for the lives she'd taken. And the other government assassin who'd originally been sent to kill her, and then decided that he was done with just killing people without maybe at least trying to save them first."

"You're shitting me." Courtney gaped. "Seriously, you're describing a dysfunction junction that makes the Z-Team sound normal."

"Did you never wonder why I could take anything around the SDN office in stride?" Steve smiled. "Oh yeah, and our team also had this dumb kid from Brooklyn who'd lost every fight in his life, until he got someone to give him a leg up so he could finally win one." Steve looked down at her lovingly. "Our whole team was made out of nothing but people who'd changed hugely from the folks they'd originally been into the people they wanted to be. You only stay a villain when you're like that Shroud guy and you don't want to change, or you're like Schmidt and you actually have physical brain problems on top of also being a Nazi war criminal. But that's not 'born' bad, that's 'went bad and stayed bad'. Even the Red Skull, because he didn't have to take a serum even its own creator was warning him would probably drive him crazier, and he definitely didn't have to grow up to join HYDRA." Steve kissed Courtney on the forehead. "So if I meet a lady who ended up stealing stuff because she spent her whole life as a kid being told she wasn't good for anything more by everybody she should have been able to count on but who all gaslit her repeatedly until she finally believed the nonsense they were selling… and who thinks that means she can't ever move on to being a good person who deserves good things… then I'm gonna tell her I think she's being an idiot."

"You have this unrealistically rosy picture of me that isn't me at all and that's just not healthy for a relationship." Courtney insisted. "Seriously, tell me one thing about me right now that you actually dislike."

"The nose ring." Steve replied immediately.

"What?" Courtney blinked.

"I get that they're normal to wear in public now, but I'm still just not used to things like that. I'm sorry." Steve said embarrassedly.

"Okay then, I'll take it out." she agreed.

"You don't have to do that." Steve shook his head.

"Steve, single girls like to look good how they think they should look good. Girls with boyfriends like to look good for their boyfriend." Courtney smiled. "I only started wearing this thing as part of my bad attitude era anyway, so maybe I should have ditched it already. And if you think I'd look cuter without it then pffft, it's gone."

"Thank you." Steve agreed simply. "And for a more serious answer to your question… I think that rather than talk about what I don't like about you, I'd like to talk about why I do like you. Because you use the words 'pity project' a lot, and I want to make sure you know that it's not that."

"I use it because I can't imagine what you actually do like about me." Courtney admitted. "And you're… what do people like about each other in relationships, anyway? I've had hook-ups before, but you're my first guy I've actually dated."

"You've heard my dating history, I'm barely ahead of you there." Steve admitted. "So yeah, relationship-wise we're the blind leading the blind… which I think we'd already agreed on when we started out." He chuckled.

"Well, sexually we're not." Courtney admitted frankly. "Hook-ups, remember? If we ever get that far then that's really not the part I'm worried about because I will steer you right around those curves, don't worry. But emotionally? Yeah, we're really a work in progress there, aren't we?"

"Do you know when I first fell for you? The moment when I caught feels just beyond being your friend? Because please don't ever doubt that we were already friends even before the other thing started." Steve entreated her.

"That part I don't doubt." Courtney reassured him gently.

"It was the day you made the cut." Steve continued. "The moment you looked up at the leaderboard and saw your name move up. You didn't see your face then, but you just had this adorable little smile… this little quirk of your lips made out of pure happiness. And it wasn't just that you were smiling, but why you were smiling. You weren't happy that you were keeping your job, or that you'd beaten the person you were competing with, or even that you'd get to stay with your new friend. You were just happy about having finally made a difference. About having done a good thing and at long last being acknowledged for it." Steve smiled down at her gently, taking her hand softly between his. "And you were a feisty one as well." He grinned at her wickedly. "Pretty girl who can choke out a bad guy like nothing but who's got a good heart deep down… what can I say, I've got a type."

"I'm not gonna tell you what I like about you, your head is already swollen enough." Courtney poked at him gently. "But… thank you, Steve." She looked slightly wistful. "I… hope I don't ever disappoint you."

"I don't think you will. But even if you do… I've disappointed people before, and still kept them. I get that you didn't get remotely enough of that when you were growing up, but if people are worth anything then they'll understand when something's really not your fault." Steve affirmed.

"Problem is, the stuff I'm still scared to tell you about was my fault." Courtney fretted.

"Did anyone die?" Steve asked. "Because I just got through telling you that I had no problem working with reformed assassins."

"… someone almost did." Courtney muttered.

"Are they okay now?" Steve questioned.

"I don't know. I'm still waiting to find out." she said pensively.

"Okay then." Steve nodded. "All right. You're still waiting to find out, and I can wait to find out too. You'll talk when you're ready, and I'm fine with that."

"Thank you." Courtney smiled tearfully. "I- is it okay if we stop talking and I just kiss my boyfriend now?"

"Nothing would make me happier." Steve smiled, and he took Courtney into his arms.

* * * * *

Author's Note: I originally just wanted Steve and Courtney to check in emotionally and then I got an entire chapter out of one conversation. For once my muse did not torment me! Thank you, muse. And yes, those two dorks are finally kissing. Haven't gone further than that, though.

Canonically, Steve is slightly weirded out by piercings. He mentions that to Natasha during TWS.

'I'll steer you around the curves' is of course a reference to Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, another one of my favorite emotionally troubled bad girls turned good. … huh, I seem to have a fictional type of my own.

'Courtney Jane Doe' was originally a suggestion from poster 'Nikas' back on SB. I have adopted it, because it fits here.

Steve actually did canonically increase War Bonds sales by a full five percent when he was on the tour, which is a legitimate achievement. Even when he was just a show pony, he was still not a useless show pony.

And no, none of Courtney's origin story here is canon. She doesn't have a canon origin story. So behold the latest voyage of the USS Make Shit Up, long may she sail. But yes, I like to try and imagine how the heck the Courtney we see could get in the particular messed-up headspace she had to begin with, and this is certainly a plausible route.

cliffc999 · Jan 5, 2026

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 36

"Good morning, everyone." Blonde Blazer greeted the assembled Z-Team at Monday morning roll call. "We're shuffling some assignments this week, so here's the new team roster. Sonar is now moved over to headquarters staff full-time-"

"Wait, we can get promoted?" Flambae interrupted. "When did that start?"

"It's not a promotion, it's just them deciding that the scary bat-headed guy with business experience would work better as admin instead of customer service." Sonar explained.

"If I might continue?" Blazer asked Flambae sweetly while crossing her arms at him and tapping her foot, and he silently acknowledged his mistake.

"And replacing him on the Z-Team's active call roster will be Waterboy." The hero in question nervously peered around the corner of the conference room door upon hearing his name.

"Uh, h-hello…" he tentatively waved at the group.

"You sure about this, boss lady?" Punch Up asked doubtfully.

"Be nice, guys." Invisigal said soothingly. "It's not like some of us weren't less than impressive our first few weeks out." She gave Waterboy an encouraging smile. "I used to be last on the leaderboard consistently, and now I'm almost halfway up. Don't worry if it takes you a little while to settle in."

"That man has been a horrible influence on you." Malevola whispered teasingly to Visi.

Blazer quirked a smile. "And given that we've cleared at least some of the immediate training backlog and have also been experiencing increased call volume, also returning to active rotation will be Captain America."

Cap stepped out into visibility from around the corner and behind Waterboy and gave Visi a proud smile at her recent encouraging moment, to which she immediately responded with a furious blush. The remainder of the meeting, including Blazer, indulged themselves in a brief chuckle.

"And now in more serious news." Blazer continued soberly. "Upon reviewing several incidents last week, we've determined a pattern. Robert?"

Cap and Waterboy both entered the room and took places around the conference table as Robert stepped up to the projector and tapped the controls. Images of several of the prior week's incidents came up on the screen. Highlighted photographs displayed similarities between all the events in question – specifically, the energy weapons used by the criminals in those incidents, as well as their red-glowing cybernetics.

"Furthermore, Royd's forensic analysis of the remains of the hacking device recovered in the incident involving Coupe revealed that the same person who'd manufactured it had also manufactured the cybernetics and energy weapons involved in these other incidents. Not only did they have certain design elements in common, but many of the individual components had been manufactured by the same chip fabricator. Which means that those components had all been procured as a single lot from a single source, meaning that the same villain had provided all this tech to Coupe and these hired goons." Robert explained. "So there's definitely a new gang in town – one with access to sophisticated technology and resources - and they are recruiting. Not just street muscle, but also superpowered lieutenants."

Robert fell grimly silent, and Blazer continued. "And given Toxic's connection to one of the incidents involving these new weapons – the underworld arms trading case several weeks ago, that Punch Up and Malevola ran into by accident while we were searching for Coupe's would-be assassins – we're almost entirely certain of who this new gang leader might be."

A picture of a hooded figure wearing a skull-faced gas mask colored an angry demonic red, with two glowing green pupils and a left eye surmounted by a cybernetic targeting monocole, filled the screen. "Shroud." Blazer said grimly. "His technology allows him to, among other things, cybernetically augment normal people into low-level superhuman combatants."

"There are also claims that superhumans implanted with his augments will have their powers boosted, but those are as yet unverified." Robert continued. Nobody noticed Visi's hands twitch slightly under the table at that statement.

"And that's in addition to Shroud's already-known and considerable capacities at tactics, organization, super-science, and hacking." Blazer said. "These are his known and identified superhuman lieutenants." Two images filled the screen… Toxic's and Coupe's. Punch Up winced and sighed at that latter one. "There were several more villains whose images were taken in the Mecha Man incident of several months ago, we don't have names for them yet and we're not certain if they are regular employees of Shroud or were just hired for the occasion." Robert continued as several more images appeared on the screen – a blue-and-white suited lightning controller, a muscular man in a white skull mask wielding two red-glowing energy khopeshes, and a dark pink living blob-man.

"Hey, that's the guy I fought in the loading dock robbery last week." Golem pointed at the blob-man.

Robert tapped a few keys and the blob-man's picture was moved over to the 'Known Lieutenants' column. "So yeah. These are the faces to keep an eye out for out there."

"We have no intel yet on what Shroud's plans are or what his next move may be. So everybody stay cautious out there; remember your training about not being ambushed, and if you have even a strong feeling that something's wrong then don't hesitate to call for backup." Blazer assured. "When we know more about what we're dealing with, we'll keep you informed. Until then, it's time to get to work."

"Good luck out there, everyone." Robert nodded to the team, and the meeting broke up as everyone headed out.

"Waterboy, for your first couple of days out there they decided it would be best if you partnered with me." Cap said as the two of them reached the parking lot and checked out an SDN car instead of Cap's usual motorcycle.

"Okay." Waterboy said tentatively, before he turned and looked wistfully out the window at the other departing heroes. "S-she's nice, isn't she?"

"Excuse me?" Cap asked politely.

"Invisigal." Waterboy looked down bashfully. "W-what she said, in the meeting…"

"Yes, that was very kind of her." Cap nodded amiably. "And she was telling the truth about having trouble getting off the bottom of the rankings for a while, but all she needed was some encouragement and a little self-confidence."

"Do- do you think she might…?" Waterboy kept looking out the window in the direction she'd driven off in.

Cap blinked in realization before smiling kindly. "I certainly agree that you've got good taste, but she already has a boyfriend."

"Oh." Waterboy slumped dejectedly. "I- she wouldn't possibly… change her mind?"

"People do change their minds sometimes, but I think her boyfriend would be very sad if that happened." Cap said as reassuringly as he could.

Waterboy suddenly looked over at Cap in realization. "Oh no."

"Relax." Cap replied. "You're entirely correct that girls who don't judge people based on superficial appearance are the best kind of girls, and I agree that they're hard to find. But she really isn't the only girl in the universe who's like that, so there's someone out there for you too. You just need to keep looking."

"I-if you say so." Waterboy sighed.

* * * * *

The day's shift passed largely without incident. There were almost no 911 calls beyond a couple of routine cases of street crime, but the non-emergency service calls ranged from a missing pets to industrial cleanup. Overall, it was just another tedious day making money for the SDN… until shortly before shift change.

Visi rubbed her aching eyes as she finished returning the unimaginatively named 'Mr. Cat' to their nervous owner. Ugh, are there any of those dumplings left? she texted Cap. I seriously need some comfort food after this shift.

Sorry. Leftovers don't usually survive very long around me. Cap texted back apologetically.

One of the reasons you should take one of those promotions is so that you can afford your grocery bill. Visi texted amusingly. Honestly, how did that metabolism survive on the front lines?

They had to issue me the ration packs normally intended for four-man recon teams operating away from base. Cap typed back.

I should've known. Visi texted back with a smile- until all the streetlights where she was parked flickered out, leaving her in the darkness. Her communicator went dead. Visi immediately went invisible and moved away from where she'd been standing.

Blackout. No comms! she texted furiously, thanking God that at least the cell phone towers had uninterruptible power supplies.

Same. Cap replied. RTB now.

OMW!

Visi mounted her cycle and drove off through the stalled evening traffic, cutting through back alleys as needed. A couple of minutes later, her radio clicked on.

"Everyone, this is Dispatch. The power's out through the entire city. SDN's running on the emergency generators." Robert said wearily. "Everybody spread out to the locations I'm putting on your screens, link up, and stand by. Flambae, you're the only flyer on shift so you get to bat cleanup a lot. Everybody else will be on the buddy system, and we're going to be working a lot of overtime tonight."

"All branch operatives, this is Blonde Blazer." she came in on circuit. "SDN is going to state of emergency Yellow. For those of you for whom this is your first time, that means no non-essential service calls and we unify our dispatch grid with the local 911 center. Hopefully the power will be up against almost immediately and we can stand down… but if it's out for any length of time, get ready for a lot of search-and-rescue calls and looting incidents."

"Shit." Visi swore as she arrived at the designated rendezvous. "Hey Punch Up." She greeted her diminutive teammate.

"Visi." He nodded back. "Damn it, I can barely see my nose in front of my face without the headlights on. You?"

"Got a flashlight." She pulled a four-cell Maglite out of her cycle's saddlebag and flicked it on and off. "Sure wish I had night vision powers, though."

"Aye." He agreed.

"Visi, Punch Up, Norden's Sporting Goods three blocks away from your location is reporting looting in progress." Robert said. "Flash mob."

"Shite." Punch Up swore as the two heroes headed over there. "Sporting goods store means they're going for the guns. We don't get there quick and put this down hard, it's gonna be an armed mob."

"We go straight in and swinging hard, got it." Visi agreed.

Several miles away, Flambae was busy airlifting out a medical emergency case that had been stranded in freeway traffic, while Malevola and Golem were busy trying to stop looters in a shopping mall. Cap and Waterboy were already hip deep in trying to stop a gang fight between some drug dealers and the competitors who'd decided to use the blackout as an opportunity to rip them off, and similar chaos was erupting all over town.

Almost forty minutes later the blackout was still continuing, and half the Z-Team as well as Blazer herself was busy backing up multiple responding units at a three-alarm fire in a retirement complex. Prompt action by the heroes had prevented any deaths, but serious injuries and close calls were in profusion.

"Great job, Waterboy." Cap reassured the aqua-powered hero as he finished hosing down yet another section of the complex. "Take a break, you're about ready to drop."

"I-I can do a little more." The young man insisted.

"Break. Now." Cap pushed gently. "You work yourself into a collapse right now, that's just more fires that don't get fought because you're on the bench longer than you need to be. We'll go get some food."

"Hey Captain." Punch Up greeted him, still covered with soot and ash from where he'd gone directly into burning sections of the building to clear wreckage and open up routes. "Damn long night." Punch Up turned grave. "Visi caught some smoke. It's not serious," he rushed to reassure the man immediately, "but she's over by the ambulances while they're havin' a look."

"Can you show Waterboy where the nearest place to grab something to eat is?" Cap asked him. "I've got to go check on her."

"'Course you do. Come on lad, over this way." Punch Up said.

"Visi?" Cap asked worriedly as he came up on where the young woman was sitting on the sidewalk near the Fire Department emergency trucks, where a casualty collection point had been setup. She looked up from where she was busy breathing steadily into an oxygen mask from one of the fire department's portable oxygen bottles and gave him a thumbs-up.

"Bad night?" Cap asked, sitting down next to her.

"My inhaler ran out." she admitted embarrassedly, her voice muffled by the mask. "I knew I should've checked it this morning." Cap's immediately reaching into his pocket was met with a head-shake. "No, it's good, I bummed a new one off the medics. Just…"

"They should put a notation in your file not to send you to fires." Cap fumed.

"They did. Volunteered anyway." Visi admitted sheepishly.

"… please stop taking chances like that." Cap sighed as he put an arm around her comfortingly. "You don't have to prove anything that badly, to me or anyone else."

Visi's face scrunched up in what Cap would never admit out loud to her was an extremely cute display of stubbornness, and she visibly gathered herself for a rebuttal- when an alert broadcast sounded from every SDN communicator in the area.

"All heroes, all heroes, major supervillain attack in progress at MDC Los Angeles Southwest. All available heroes respond immediately."

"Not you." Cap firmly held out his hand as Visi shot to her feet. "Not until they clear you." He pointed at the paramedics.

"Rrrrgh." she growled in frustration but knew better to argue. Visi sat there frustratedly, watching as every other hero mounted up in their vehicles or used their own mobility powers, if any, to travel ahead.

* * * * *

"Hey babe!" Toxic sneered as his acid barrage splattered off of Blazer's aura. "You're a little behind schedule tonight, we expected you earlier!"

Blazer's furious punch was met by Morphus' absorbing the force of the blow with his gelatin-like body, as he attempted to wrap around and suffocate her. Fighting against the restraining fluid Blazer used her full strength to clap her hands together several times, sending massive shockwaves rippling through the villain's amorphous body and stunning him temporarily.

As she fought free of the gelatin Khopesh slashed open the street beneath her with red scythes of cutting energy flung from the tips of his eponymous weapons. Blazer caught herself before she fell more than several feet, but that was enough of an opportunity for White Lightning's electrical beams to arc furiously off her aura, before being joined by Toxic's corrosive blasts. The combined firepower forced her to retreat temporarily as minor traces of damage began to leak through her invulnerability, but her attempt to fly away and then swoop back for a flank attack was met by an armored SWAT van being telekinetically tossed through the air by the psychic supervillainess that Flambae and Malevola had captured earlier this week, and that had just been freed from the Municipal Detention Center by the squad of villains that Shroud had sent to force a jailbreak. Blazer swatted the armored van aside as if it were a fly, but she'd been delayed just long enough for Toxic to dodge her rush.

"And our special new guests are right on schedule!" Toxic cheered as he saw the escaping prisoners began to fan out through where they'd breached the compound walls. "Okay, team two? Blow it now!"

A series of explosions sounded distantly from a nearby building. "What have you done?!?" Blazer cried in alarm.

"Oh don't worry, nobody's dead… yet." Toxic sneered. "But those demo charges did just weaken the interior support beams a little, so given how weakened the structure is over there I'd say there's maybe… oh, two minutes before the top floor over there decides it would rather move to the basement? And oh yeah, that's the hospital wing, so somebody really should go over there and help support their local jail before that happens."

"You… how dare you risk-?" Blazer gaped in shock.

"Calculated risk, if you please." Toxic laughed. "Give us credit where credit's due!"

Blonde Blazer glared furiously at Toxic, but then had to fly off to the hospital wing before it collapsed and help support the weakened structure until the rooms in danger could be evacuated.

"Okay! Lightning, take charge of the evac." Toxic ordered as she flew away. "Matchstick boy's incoming right now and I've got to fly up there and head him off. But we've got at least five minutes before the nearest ground-bound heroes make it here, so all you've got to worry about is crashing through that police barricade over there."

"No problem." The electric villainess laughed mockingly. "Normal SWAT cops versus us? Our only danger will be boredom."

"Just don't dawdle. You know how tight the timing is on these things." Toxic reminded her, and shot skyward to intercept the incoming Flambae.

* * * * *

"As it turns out, you didn't miss anything." Cap reassured Visi as they met back up at the SDN Torrance branch building to clock out. "By the time we got there, the jailbreak was already over."

"Yes." Blonde Blazer fumed. "I was pinned in place and couldn't pursue, Flambae couldn't get past Toxic's interference, and nobody else could keep up with the escaping prisoner convoy without immediately getting hammered by the firepower they had available. And given that Toxic had been leading the villain squad, and I saw almost all of the known and suspected lieutenants making up the rest of that squad, it's pretty obvious who arranged for all of this."

"Shroud." Cap said gravely.

"You said almost all?" Punch Up asked.

"Coupe wasn't there." Blazer shook her head. "Shroud's apparently not rushing to put her on missions where she can be expected to run into us."

"Plus, she's a stealth expert." Cap said. "Be a waste to put her on the big smash-and-grab jobs when she could be used elsewhere. Which makes me wonder what else Shroud was doing tonight that we haven't found out about yet."

"The power failure wasn't a coincidence, was it?" Flambae nodded.

"Nah." Royd contributed. "Preliminary analysis indicate dat de hack yesterday at de ISP snuck a virus in lots of de 'smart' electrical meters all through town. Dis whole 'Internet of Things' concept have a security bug or two dey goan need to fix."

"How does messing with the electrical meters in a bunch of houses cause a power failure?" Malevola asked.

"When the safety features in the meters are falsely reporting short circuits and overvoltages in thousands of residences all over town, and that makes the power-management algorithms in the electric company's grid control computer start hallucinating that the entire power grid is on fire." Robert answered. "Every time they tried to reboot the grid, a fresh wave of trouble signals through the Internet from all those hotwired meters shut it back down immediately. Took them over half an hour to trace what the fault even was – it was not something anyone had ever seen before - and then they had to figure out how to disconnect the monitoring system entirely."

"Shroud crashes the power, waits for SDN's emergency drill to deploy us all over town, waits until all the heroes are exhausted from having chased looters and fought fires all night-" Cap analyzed.

"Yeah, and the retirement complex fire was deliberately set." Visi broke in. "Picked that up from the fire marshal at the scene after you left, while I was stuck there twiddling my thumbs."

"The whole thing was set up to get us out of position, exhausted, and too far away to respond in time, so that the detention center would be wide open for a jailbreak." Blazer sighed.

"Recruiting drive." Chase glowered. "The supervillains we'd spent the last week catchin', they're all back out now and with a new boss to be grateful too. Plus all the normal criminals got sprung likewise."

"Plus he just made a big splash on the local villain scene and got his name out in a big way." Prism said.

"Yeah." Visi agreed. "There's several other gangs in town just got served notice they got competition now. And all the independents and street-corner hustlers out there, they see Shroud's big intro splash and maybe they're a little impressed, and maybe are a little slower to back the incumbents."

"So what are we doing about it?" Sonar asked.

"LAPD is out of ideas. Sheriff's department is out of ideas. I'm out of ideas. Does our military advisor have anything?" she asked hopefully.

"If we just keep chasing after them, they'll just keep outrunning us." Cap said. "We need to get inside their decision loop… but that's kinda hard when we don't know their mission goal, don't have any locations on their bases or staging areas, don't have any inroads to their communications, and don't have anyone to interrogate who actually knows anything."

"Shroud's goal seems pretty clear-cut. Build a gang, recruit an army." Robert said.

"Yeah. But you mobilize an army not as an end, but a means to an end. So the question is 'who's he going to be fighting?'" Cap wondered.

"For the near future, the other gangs in town." Blazer said. "But after he's suitably pushed aside his rivals – assuming he does – then once he's solidly established himself, what does his gang do next?"

"Shroud's takedown of Mecha Man several months ago was for the purpose of capturing the Astral Pulse from him, but it was lost – almost certainly destroyed - in the fighting." Robert said slowly. "So he's gotten his revenge… destroyed his old enemy's legacy… lost the prize he was hoping to steal… where does he go from there?"

The silent conference room was his only answer.

* * * * *

"We have had a successful beginning." Shroud orated tonelessly from the catwalk suspended over the warehouse. "Our enemies have been left grasping at straws. Our ranks have been swollen by those we have liberated. Our war chest is full, our armory well-stocked, our capabilities have been demonstrated. But this is only step one."

"So don't start pricing those retirement condos just yet, guys!' Toxic's voice mocked the assembly from where he stood at Shroud's right hand. "Because now the real work begins! Those of you who haven't seen the doctor yet, we're gonna have to cycle you through and get you your augments. And once we're all jacked up and ready to go… well then! It'll be time for you to get back out there and go revisit your old friends!"

"Correct." Shroud resumed speaking right on cue. "We have bloodied the noses of the heroes… but now it is time to withdraw and leave them floundering, with nowhere to apply their strength. And in that interim we shall turn our strength elsewhere, to those who believe that they control the crime of Los Angeles."

"Uh, they do control the crime." A large hulking thug with outsized cybernetic arms said. "Like, they're all over-" The dimwitted muscle finally clued in on the expressions he was drawing from the two men on the balcony above. "-shutting up now, sir."

"Armstrong, we're really gonna have to talk later about appropriate timing." Toxic said menacingly.

"As our intellectually unimpressive compatriot has just demonstrated, there is a belief among many that they are the ones who truly control the crime in Los Angeles." Shroud chuckled menacingly. "A belief that we shall disillusion harshly. The syndicates and gangs who believe that the city is theirs will be swept aside, one by one. Those with the wisdom to choose the winning side will be rewarded. And those who do not will be punished. And for those of you here, who will have been with us from the beginning, the rewards will be the greatest."

"For we are the Red Ring. And in the fullness of time, this city will be ours."

* * * * *

Author's Note: Poor Waterboy. Crushes on the first girl to speak nicely to him in a long while, then immediately finds out his training officer is her boyfriend. But at least he didn't have time to torture himself with a hopeless crush for days and days, he can start accepting things right away.

No, Steve is not going to show him the 'Skinny Steve' picture. Think about it. It's not really comforting to tell Waterboy 'I got a miraculous glow-up that got me out of looking like you, but you already have superpowers and so that's just something else you can't hope for'. But Cap really will sympathize with the poor guy for obvious reasons.

And yes, that was very uncharacteristically kind for canon Visi. Of course, after like a month of being Steve's girlfriend she's not canon Visi any more. And even in-game, Visi becomes notably softer on her hero route, once you finally get her past the catharsis and acceptance of her confession to Robert in episode 7. Steve's just gotten her to most of that character development earlier, even if she still has that particular big hurdle on her path to clear.

The 'power failure event' in episode 5 is just a power failure. I'm rolling with it a little re: a non-canon jailbreak and such. And yeah, Blazer's ability to be anywhere on the map almost immediately and her being a one-woman army means that if your plan involves any kind of major alert scenario, you need a line item called 'How to delay her long enough to finish up and leave'.

I really feel bad about being so hard on Visi's lungs, but honestly. Asthmatic people should not be firefighting, and setting fires is a useful tactic Shroud keeps repeating because it works.

And yes, Shroud's plan so far actually is 'build up power'. Remember, at this point in time he's not expecting the Proto-Pulse experiments to actually deliver any useful results. If things change later on, then he'll adapt.

cliffc999 · Jan 5, 2026

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 39

"The last time I saw something this unhelpful from my chain of command, they were trying to drop a- let's just say our own air support was about to vaporize us." Cap fumed.

"This would be roughly the business equivalent." Sonar agreed. "Every request Blonde Blazer has made to try and get more resources or intel or access to respond to the Shroud situation has been… not exactly denied, but sidetracked into bureaucratic limbo."

"So, like the Department of Defense." Cap nodded. "You don't want to risk your career by being the guy who had to sign off on a hard 'No' in case it comes back to bite you later, so instead it's 'Gee, we'd really like to help but we're overextended and you'll have to take your place in the queue.'"

"Worse yet, our branch office's evaluations are about to go down." Sonar continued. "The head office has a performance tracking system for branches as well as for individuals, and-" He shook his head. "There's been a shift in emphasis of the evaluation criteria recently. A little re-weighting."

"Re-weighting?" Cap inquired.

"Customer satisfaction is job one." Sonar quoted the corporate jingle ironically. "Never mind that we've had multiple major emergency situations in the past month, the fact that we've had to postpone doing the bread-and-butter calls multiple times is hurting the average. And given how they just re-weighted the average, that's dragging the branch down more than the fact that we've managed to get through an oil refinery fire and the retirement complex fire with zero deaths, plus all the rest."

"How are they scoring the jailbreak?" Cap asked.

"Three guesses." Sonar said disgustedly. "Never mind that full-time security on the prison wasn't our responsibility in the first place, or that we followed SDN policy in the blackout to the letter and that's why we were out of position to respond. The only thing corporate is focusing on is that technically we had someone there who could have prevented the escape and didn't. So obviously that's a big black mark all on us – and Miss Blazer in particular - and nobody else."

"I'm almost starting to wonder if Shroud knows someone at the head office." Cap said disgustedly.

"It's possible, I suppose, but he wouldn't need to. If you're familiar enough with the psychology of corporate America then a lot of these reactions are fairly predictable. All he'd need to do is set up the same basic conditions and he could count on something stupid being done from on high to tie us up in a holding pattern, even if he didn't know exactly what." Sonar replied. "But the summary is that Blazer's very soon going to get micro-managing orders from head office on how to 'remediate the shortfall' here, and those orders on redeployment and focusing more on the cases that subscribers actually pay for are going to basically leave us with no time to actually devote any serious effort to the Shroud case except randomly running after 911 calls as they pop up."

"Contrary to popular belief, my superpower is not actually conjuring strategic miracles on demand." Cap sighed. "And while I've worked in a government bureaucracy before, I was hardly as much of a master at navigating it as some other people I've seen. I'll give it some thought, but off the top of my head I don't see any way I can help fix this one."

"That's the part you're not going to like." Sonar said diffidently. "The reason I asked to talk to you about this off-the-books is because you're the one person at the Torrance branch office who currently has something that someone very senior at corporate actually wants this month. And you would very likely be able to bargain for their cooperation in helping get our branch the freedom to maneuver that it needs in return for your actually giving it to them… as opposed to your several prior refusals."

"… my accepting that transfer offer to the Hollywood team and becoming one of SDN's hot new marketing faces." Cap realized, and then he sighed and rubbed his forehead in frustration. "In return for which, our publicity-obsessed vice-president might possibly use his authority to get the rest of the head office off our backs. Or he might not."

"I'll keep helping her compose the best rebuttals we can, but there's only so much talking can do when the people above you just don't want to listen." Sonar said. "Sorry to drop this on you, Captain, but it was all I could think of."

"This situation isn't your fault, and…" Cap paused and winced. "And I've been a show pony before when it was actually producing something. But I'm still not sure- I'm really going to have to think about this for a while." he sighed.

* * * * *

The furious blasts of electricity spattered uselessly off of the Mighty Shield as Captain America charged through the furious barrage of laser fire, his dash barely keeping one step ahead of Shroud's gunmen as they failed to adjust their aim in time.

"The hell is wrong with you idiots? He's just one man!" White Lightning cried furiously as she switched her aim to a nearby fire hydrant and blasted it open, soaking the entire sidewalk with water. Cap immediately jumped clear of the ground in a leaping somersault, just barely ahead of her next electrical blast arcing through the water and creating an electrified field trap that would have seriously injured anyone still standing on it.

Cap landed in a crouch on top of a nearby newspaper dispenser, crouching down fully behind the shield against the laser fire now accurately homing in on the temporarily immobilized target.

"There! Just keep him pinned!" White Lightning ordered her men. "I'll finish up insi-"

The electric villainess turned around to walk face-first into Invisigal's foot, as she faded into visibility while in the middle of her leaping side-kick after first rebounding off the nearby wall. White Lightning was sent sprawling into the two nearest of her supporting gunmen, knocking their aim off, and the immediate reaction of the others was to turn and start firing at her. Visi threw them a mocking grin and faded out again, leaving them shooting at air, as Cap's shield toss came arcing in and rebounded off several of the other gunmen, knocking them flat.

The prone White Lightning slapped her palm flat on the wet ground and frantically discharged the most powerful blast she could… which did nothing but shock her remaining men into unconsciousness, as she'd been too desperate to note that the burst hydrant had still been spreading the water further and further. Invisigal faded into sight again, having leapt into the air just in time to avoid the shock… and she'd chosen her landing point with precision, as Visi came down on top of the prone villainess with both knees and then delivered a gleeful roundhouse punch directly into her face.

Cap recovered his shield and walked up to his girlfriend grinning ear to ear as she stood up off of the thoroughly cold-cocked White Lightning. "Friendly fire is just the worst, isn't it?"

Visi grinned wildly back at him. "And tactical synergy's still the best."

"Dispatch, this is Cap. We've got White Lightning and seven gang members in custody. ETA on the prisoner transport?" he said into his communicator.

"Sending it now. Be there in just a few minutes." Robert replied. "Great job, guys. Now we've finally got someone we can question."

"What was even here for them to be hitting anyway?" Cap asked curiously as he looked at the row of seedy storefronts they'd been fighting in front of.

"Probably the stash house of another gang." Visi said. "Not that we can go in and look. No search warrant, and all the action happened outside."

"Strange to think that the person who called in the emergency was probably another criminal gang." Cap sighed. "And that we just acted as their protective muscle."

"Way to buzzkill, Captain." Visi said disapprovingly. "But… yeah, kinda sends a mixed message. Still, these guys needed taking down no matter what they were doing at the time."

"You're right about that." Cap agreed regretfully.

"Look, about what Sonar told you this morning..." Visi sighed mournfully. "You know that whatever decision you make, I'll support it. Right?"

"I know." Cap replied softly. "I just- I'm not selfish enough to keep ducking the PR tour just because I don't like it, not if doing it would actually help. I just can't shake the conviction that it wouldn't help. No matter how rational a move it seems, it just feels wrong."

Visi visibly failed to find words, and settled for a comforting hug from behind. Cap half-turned and hugged her back with one arm, until the approaching sirens warned them to straighten up and look professional again. The police arrived along with the prisoner van, and the perps were swiftly cuffed, tagged, and loaded up.

"Dispatch, we're going to escort the van in." Cap radioed. "This is the first lieutenant of Shroud's we've actually caught since the major action started, and we'll definitely want to hang on to her."

"That's a great idea, but you know the new mandates about 'service efficiency'." Robert sighed. "I can't even authorize a 'nonessential tasking' like that."

"Then we're going on break and we'll call you back in fifteen." Visi replied immediately.

"Hah. Break it is- oh damn it! The board just lit up, and we've got more calls. Which means I can't authorize break right now-" Robert swore. "You guys are going to have to split up and take these-"

"'I'm from the head office, and I'm here to help.'" Cap air-quoted sarcastically.

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 40

"Good news. We've finally got a break in the Shroud case." Robert addressed the assembled team in the conference room.

"It's about time!" Flambae swore frustratedly. "After those idiots let White Lightning and her goons escape yesterday – the van didn't even get halfway to the jail before Toxic broke them out!"

Visi groaned and Cap winced in frustrated reminisce as Robert continued. "However, while she was the only lieutenant we caught yesterday, she wasn't the only henchman. Flambae, two of the goons that you and Prism picked up from that attack on Northside weren't quite as silent as the rest. We now know what Shroud's calling his gang – the Red Ring – More importantly, we've got a line on the location of his cybernetic augmentation facility, because these goons remember where they got wired up."

"Uh, are we sure this tip is any good?" Visi asked worriedly. "I mean, we already know that Shroud likes to lure people into traps."

Robert carefully masked his wince and nodded back. "That's entirely true. Which is why we're not going straight in this time… and why you'll be the most essential part of the operation."

Less than an hour later, as many of the Z-Team as could be freed up from being on call via 'creative scheduling' were waiting nervously as Invisigal crept ahead. "Okay, I'm inside. Why would Shroud put his cybernetics facility inside of a food wholesaler?"

"Distribution centers like this for grocery chains are built with the facilities for industrial refrigeration, commercial power, and areas that can be repurposed as sealed hygienic spaces without ever having been regulated or recorded as medical facilities." Cap contributed on teamchat. "Buy a defunct one, pay to fix it up a little, move in your equipment, and nobody notices a thing."

"Clever." Visi whispered back. "Right, I'm playing ceiling cat up in the rafters and… yeah, we've got Red Ring goons here posted as security. There's a couple patrolling the warehouse floor and I can see lights on in the offices from here. I don't see Shroud or anybody with superpowers, though."

"Cameras? Security systems?" Robert asked on channel.

"Yeah, and not the kind a grocery store chain uses. Setup's crude, but entirely workable." Visi reported. "You picking up the view on my headset cam?"

"Feed's clear." Robert said. "See if you can get me some imagery of the north side as well, then we'll check the offices."

"What do you mean 'we', white man?" Visi joked as she faded into invisibility again and moved off.

"Huh, the camera still works even if she's invisible. That's handy." Robert said with mild surprise.

"If she can still see to move around while invisible, then obviously her powers let light in." Prism scoffed. "They just don't let it back out."

Ten minutes later Visi had finished her cautious sweep of the offices and the ground floor, taking camera footage the entire way.

"Right, the facility's definitely here. We've got a cybersurgery theatre set up in what used to be that one storage locker, and the meat locker's been repurposed for parts and organ storage. Equipment looks to have been stolen from a hospital somewhere, but there's no thefts been reported locally." Robert analyzed. "Shroud's not here right now, though, and neither are any of his important goons."

"If we take out his setup, then that means he can't expand the Red Ring any further until he's set up a new surgical facility." Sonar contributed, having reunited with the team just for this raid.

"Plus we might get clues as to his larger setup from the captured gear. I mean, he stole it or bought it from somewhere, and it wouldn't have been a small job either way." Malevola said.

"Agreed. We'll do the raid. Captain, you've got field command." Robert agreed.

"Start your hack." Cap ordered. "Before they even know we're there, I don't want them to be able to call out for help at all. No phones, no Internet, nothing. Even radio jamming if you can possibly arrange for it."

"That I probably won't be able to, but its 99 to 1 they'll just use existing telecom setup." Robert agreed. "And, hacking now."

"All right." Cap looked down at the hasty floor plan they'd drawn from Visi's scouting report and began explaining the plan.

Several minutes later the team was in position. "Visi. Status?" Cap whispered into his headset.

"I'm at the breaker box. Say when." Visi whispered eagerly.

"Three… two… one… go!" On Cap's word, Golem tore straight through the exterior loading dock door and charged in, Flambae and Sonar hot on his heels. Malevola's teleportal brought her, Prism, and Cap directly into the store's security office. The several Red Ring goons on duty there were unconscious before they even know what was hitting them.

"Hey, why are the lights still on?" Malevola said worriedly.

"Visi, status? Visi, check in!" Cap said hurriedly, to met only with silence. "Flambae, check in!" Cap continued frantically.

"Warehouse clear!" Flambae replied immediately. "All targets do-"

The entire building shook with a thunderous detonation as Flambae's broadcast cut out, and the fire alarms and sprinklers went off as the several heroes in the office squad went to their knees.

"Malevola, Prism, get down there!" Cap ordered. "I'm going for Visi!"

"On it!" the two ladies acknowledged as they portaled away, and Cap took off at a dead run.

* * * * *

It was the afternoon immediately after the botched raid, and the overhead image of a devastated warehouse was still visible on the projector screen. The entire half of the food distribution center that had been warehouse and loading dock had been cratered and left open to the sky by the detonation of the giant fertilizer bomb that had been prepositioned in one of the trucks parked in the interior of the loading dock. Golem and Flambae's metahuman resilience had let them survive the blast, but Sonar had escaped alive only because he'd flown into the interior building to also go check on Invisigal as soon as she'd failed to report in.

"Approximately five million dollars in property damage. Three alleged members of the Red Ring gang killed by the IED. A completely warrantless search-" the senior HR representative began.

"It wasn't warrantless, sir." Invisigal protested. "We had imagery of Red Ring presence on site. That was probable cause to enter."

"Illegally obtained imagery." HR glared icily at her. "And therefore of no value as evidence."

"Sir, if she could enter the building without having to unlock a door or a window, that's not forcible entry." Cap pointed out reasonably. "And if the building was abandoned and the only occupants were illegally squatting, that's not even trespassing. For that matter, any sign of occupancy in what should be an empty building can be considered probable cause to suspect a crime in progress. She was legally present, and anything she – or the camera that she was carrying - saw and recorded is admissible."

"Be that as it may." the HR representative waved away Cap's objections. "You recklessly conducted an unauthorized raid on your own initiative, to no good result and leaving SDN open to multiple lawsuits! Potentially including wrongful death suits! Not to mention the slight PR problem we have of explaining why an IED more appropriate to the Second Gulf War just detonated in the commercial district of Torrance!"

"We get sued because these gobshites blew themselves up with their own bomb?" Punch Up said incredulously. "How the hell does that even work?"

"Sir, I take full responsibility for the outcome." Robert said evenly. "I turned up the clues, they ran their plan by me, I dispatched them to this task."

"I'm the branch manager. The responsibility falls on me." Blonde Blazer said immediately.

"We didn't even tell her what we were doing until after it blew up in our faces." Robert cut in immediately. "She's blameless."

"It was my entry plan, and I led the team in." Captain America stated. "Robert was in an advisory role."

"As far as the head office is concerned, you all were in serious dereliction of procedure." The HR man said icily. "Fortunately for most of you, there's nowhere else we can transfer you to that's further down than where you already are. But you can rest assured your former freewheeling days are over. Time accounting will be strictly enforced from now on, and Dispatch will be expected to adhere to procedure to the letter." He glared down at Robert. "Especially by newer and less experienced dispatchers. And as for you, Ms. Blazer, you've let your branch run hog-wild for long enough. Clean this mess up and keep these people in line from now on, or else you'll be downtown explaining to a review board why you should even be allowed to keep your job." He sniffed. "There has already been some question raised as to whether you should have been promoted from field duty to a management position in the first place. Perhaps it would be best if you just voluntarily transferred back there without prejudice."

"No thank you, sir." Blonde Blazer said resolutely.

"Oh, and one last question. According to your account, your decision to risk the raid was ultimately based on the testimony and footage provided by Invisigal. So where was she during the critical moment of the raid?"

"Unconscious on the floor, because someone zapped me from behind while I was waiting at the fuse box." Visi answered shamefully, her face pale. "I didn't even see who."

"That's where I found her, and unconscious." Cap immediately confirmed.

"Why didn't they kill you while you were helpless?" the HR representative questioned piercingly. "After all, they had no hesitation about trying to blow the rest of your team to pieces."

"That explosion was potentially survivable by at least half of us." Cap immediately pointed out. "If the Red Ring had truly been out to leave no survivors, they'd have hit us immediately after the bomb blast softened us up with Toxic and all their other heavy hitters. Their apparent objective with the truck bomb was just to cause the unfavorable PR incident, not assassinate the Z-Team… as well as do the maximum damage with the minimum risk to themselves."

"Well, they certainly accomplished that, Captain. And you made it easy for them." HR sneered. "Nobody is coming out of this mess looking good, especially not you lot. This branch is on probation until further notice, and appropriate disciplinary action will be handed out after HR has finished a detailed review. Until then, get back to work – and try not to screw it up any worse than you already have."

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch:
Arrival: D Plus 44

The Torrance area remained quiet for the next several days as Red Ring activity spread further out into LA County. The pre-existing criminal gangs and syndicates found their territory being encroached upon by the high-tech newcomers, who had more supervillain muscle available to them than any other gang in town and whose street muscle was all cybernetically augmented and armed with high-tech weapons. The several mercenary supervillains that the largest LA syndicate could field were systematically lured into traps of their own and brought down by small teams of villains led by either Toxic or Coupe, and in barely a week every other player in LA was on the defensive. Worse yet, Shroud was methodical enough not to expand too far or too fast and leave himself vulnerable. Every single inch of territory he claimed remained solidly in his possession regardless of what reprisals his competition tried.

Meanwhile, SDN's Torrance branch was so mired down in red tape and corporate procedure that progress on the Red Ring case was at a standstill. The head office was breathing down Blazer's neck, and every single dispatch call was being subject to practically real-time review in the system by corporate oversight. Every hero in the Torrance branch office was grumbling at the newer and less pleasant working conditions, and every hero not on the Z-Team was enthusiastically and bitterly blaming their least popular compatriots for the screw-up. Morale in the office was at an all-time low, and job performance only avoided following it due to the Z-Team's stubborn refusal to give the HR representative the satisfaction. Even so, matters were building to a blow-out.

"And the hell of it is, we can't even go get drunk and blow off some steam because they'd use that to bust our asses!" Prism fumed at morning roll call. "I ain't had any relaxation 'cept stayin' home and shitpostin' on the Internet, and that gets kinda old after a while!"

"I'm really sorry I blew it for everyone, guys." Visi mourned.

"Hey, nobody thought to have you check the trucks. Not even me." Cap reassured her.

"This is bullshit." Flambae swore viciously, having only just returned to duty after spending several days recuperating in the infirmary. "Shroud is playing SDN like violins, and they don't even care!"

"And that wasn't even his real cybernetics facility." Golem mourned. "He'd stolen that gear from a rival gang and just set it up in an abandoned building."

"The two goons we captured must have been primed specifically with that story." Cap agreed, thinking back to what Robert had told him about how Shroud had used the same tactic to lure Mecha Man into that ambush.

"How the hell is he so consistently one step ahead?" Malevola wondered. "Sure, the guy's supposed to be a criminal genius, but he hasn't made a single mistake yet."

"I guess somebody's got to be the champ." Sonar moaned. "Pity we're the ones that have to deal with him."

"Pity our head office has all their heads so far up their arses they're shittin' in their own mouths." Punch Up cursed.

"Indeed." Flambae stared angrily down into the flame protruding from his upraised palm. "Shroud is busy taking over half the crime in the county, and SDN just fiddles while LA burns."

"And while the LAPD and the FBI are doing what they can, they don't remotely have the firepower to go up against supervillains. Their primary source of superhero response is contracting to SDN… which just doesn't seem to care." Cap sighed.

"Well… time for another day of doing nothing useful." The morning meeting broke up acrimoniously as the clock ticked off start of shift, and everybody went dejectedly out to start their assignments.

Shortly before lunch, Cap's cell phone rang. "Cap here."

"Cap, you need to get back here now. That head office asshole just showed up here again… with some corporate security guys and Phenomaman himself as superhuman muscle. And he just ordered Robert to call Visi back to the office." Sonar told him without preamble. "I have no idea what's happening, but it does not look good."

"I'm on my way." Cap said grimly and revved his motorcycle to top speed. A few minutes later he came screeching into SDN's parking lot, and immediately leapt off his bike and ran into the building at top speed.

"-this is outrageous!" Blazer's raised voice came to Cap's ears as he approached the conference room.

"No, what's outrageous is that you missed it this long." the HR representative retorted. "Our internal investigation has determined exactly how the warehouse raid went so wrong, and we will-"

The door to the conference room slammed open, and all heads turned to see a quietly furious super-soldier standing in the doorway, his shield on his arm and only a twitch away from being readied to throw. Cap's searching gaze immediately noted the position of everyone present, and his eyes narrowed at seeing a sweating and white-faced Visi determinedly trying not to show her fear… as Phenomaman's hand was solidly set upon her shoulder, preventing her from moving.

"Unhand the lady immediately." Cap unhesitatingly squared up against the powerful alien hero. "Please."

"Regretfully, I cannot do that." Phenomaman replied sincerely. "She is being placed under arrest."

"Arrest?" Cap swore incredulously. "On what charge?"

"You'd think a man of your alleged military talents would have figured it out on your own." The HR man said. "Clearly she's been Shroud's double agent all along. That's how he's consistently stayed one step ahead of you, and that's why she helped lure you all into such a disastrous raid that she was then conveniently 'disabled' during at a critical moment."

"Cap-" Visi whimpered despairingly, "I-"

Cap's hand balled into a fist. Phenomaman narrowed his eyes and began to tense. Blazer stared levelly at him, stepping up as if to stand between the two heroes.

"Warrant." Cap finally said, exhaling deeply.

"You have no business-" the HR rep began.

"Warrant." Cap repeated firmly. "You know, that official piece of paper? The one that's signed by a judge, and which states that a court of law has determined that there is probable cause to detain someone on suspicion of a crime? Do you have one?"

"This is an internal SDN investigation-" HR began.

"Son, just don't." Cap drove over him mercilessly. "Corporate security can question employees, discipline them, and even recommend to HR that they fire them. They cannot detain them by force unless the person is actively in the commission of a crime at the moment of arrest… or unless they are serving a valid arrest warrant that has been issued by the legal authorities. That's straight from both relevant case law and SDN corporate policy on usage of force." Cap smiled with bared teeth. "I should know, I helped teach the class on it."

"Is this true?" Phenomaman asked Blazer. "Have the legalities in fact not been properly fulfilled?"

"Unless that man can pull an arrest warrant from a California state court out of that briefcase right now, then no they haven't." Blazer shook her head firmly.

Phenomaman immediately let go of Visi's shoulder and stepped back. "Then I cannot lend my strength to perpetrating such an injustice. After all, our primary purpose as heroes is to uphold the law and defend the innocent."

"Thank you." Cap nodded to him sincerely before turning his icy gaze back to the corporate rep. "If you want Visi in handcuffs, take whatever evidence you have to a grand jury and get back to us… if they give you an indictment. Until then, I might suggest that Human Resources confine itself to activities more appropriate for HR, instead of operating on the belief that they're self-appointed law enforcement."

"Security, escort this man from-" HR began.

Cap immediately held up his phone and both of the uniformed security officers stepped back. "You are this close to me dialing 911 and reporting a kidnapping in progress. Now how's about you step back from this insanity and actually explain what the hell you think you're doing."

"That's precisely what I've been asking!" Blazer said heatedly. "What actual evidence do you even have for this insane a suspicion?"

"I'm glad you asked that." the HR rep sneered. "Because upon a detailed review of Miss Doe's personnel file, it turns out that we'd had the evidence of her betrayal the entire time. We just hadn't known its significance... until now."

He opened his briefcase and brought out a thin manila folder, which he opened to reveal a photograph taken during Courtney's entrance physical upon joining SDN along with an accompanying page of notations. The photograph was of her naked torso… and clearly displayed several glowing red subcutaneous stripes directly beneath her sternum. Stripes that were clearly coming from cybernetic implants almost entirely identical to those that had been seen in quite a few cases recently.

"The Red Ring's signature cybernetics package." the HR man sneered, as Blazer gasped in shock. "You work for Shroud, Invisibitch. And you have been since even before you joined SDN."

* * * * *

Author's Note: Re: 'unhelpful' chain of command, Cap is of course referring to the nuke in Avengers 1. *g*

And I foreshadowed it, and now it's finally here, just as some people already guessed. Visi was terrified of Cap reading her unredacted file for a reason. And yes, the long-lost and almost entirely mythical HR finally shows up in 'Dispatch'… just in time to ruin everything. But hey, that's HR for you.

And yes, fucking Shroud's a fucking asshole, and it looks like I'm getting Actually Smarter Shroud after all. I mean, not that he's being super clever here – he just repeated on the Z-Team what he originally did to Mecha Man, basically – but it doesn't have to be super clever to be infuriatingly effective.

To spoil a bit, no, Shroud does not secretly own someone at SDN corporate. What's going on is exactly what Sonar said – it's not like the corporate mentality is hard to predict, even without Shroud's tech.

cliffc999 · Tuesday at 12:30 PM

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 44

"I don't believe it." Blazer said immediately, to Visi's shock. "Just to start with the most obvious objection, if Shroud were actually trying to send someone undercover among us he'd remove their identifying markers first."

"This is not even remotely proof that she's a double agent, and I don't think it's even legal for you to be using her medical records like that." Cap questioned.

"Is that your solution to this grave a security breach? To shove your head in the sand?" the HR rep questioned incredulously.

"All you've proven is that Visi had at least one contact with Shroud at some point during her previous villain career." Blazer protested. "Which is maybe a bit surprising, but is hardly impossible for a then villain… and as the Captain said, doesn't even begin to prove your accusation!"

"I have no intention of arguing this with people who are too obviously biased to be objective." The HR representative sniffed. "And maybe you can sufficiently abuse legal technicalities-"

"The Sixth Amendment is a 'legal technicality' now?" Cap glared at him.

"-to save her from arrest for the moment-" he blustered.

"You can't even try to take this 'evidence' of yours to the grand jury as the Captain suggested." Blazer scoffed. "That would violate the medical privacy laws!"

"BUT SHE'S STILL NOT STAYING HERE!" the HR rep exploded. "California state law allows an employee to be discharged at any time, for any cause or none, and by my authority as a senior HR representative of SDN I say she's gone! And not even you can block that, Ms. Branch Manager!" the red-faced man snarled.

"You can't use her medical records to fire her that way!" Blazer protested angrily. "SDN would be sued into oblivion, and there are multiple people in this room who would blow the whistle on what you've done – not least of all me!"

"I can entirely use her medical records to fire her for medical reasons, and I will." The HR man sneered. "After all, Miss Doe's asthma is recorded as having significantly interfered with her ability to work in multiple incidents just this month. Clearly the initial decision to allow someone with a disqualifying physical condition to engage in strenuous work involving law enforcement and emergency first response was ill-advised, and should be reconsidered. HR is withdrawing her medical waiver. She's fired." The man sneered. "And oh look, now that she's no longer employed she's violated the terms of the Phoenix Program… so she gets to go back to jail anyway!"

"No she doesn't." Cap cut him off. "The others are here as conditions of their criminal sentences. Visi turned herself in to SDN voluntarily; she was never charged in a court, let alone convicted. She's as free to leave as I am."

"And your reason for discharging her is an obvious post hoc rationalization-" Blazer began.

"And it's still one that will take her months of litigation in court to even begin to try and overturn… and against SDN's legal team, she's welcome to try! Especially on her budget." He scoffed. "Your discharge stands, Miss Doe. You will hand over your employee ID and all company property immediately, and then you will be escorted by these gentlemen to clean out your locker and be thrown off the grounds-"

"You two stay right there." Blazer glared at the security guards, who immediately flinched back yet again. "I'll escort her. You've done more than enough."

"Captain, you stay here." the HR rep turned to him. "Your own conduct today merits serious discussion, and your position will only be saved by… cooperation."

Cap stared wordlessly at the man for a long moment, before taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders.

"Stay with him, Captain." Blazer begged. "Don't burn any bridges you don't have to. I'll take care of Visi, and hopefully this will last exactly as long as it takes me to call HQ and reach somebody who isn't crazy."

"Do it." Visi asked Cap softly. "I've already cost you enough."

Cap stared helplessly after the two women as they left. When he turned back to face the HR representative, his face was a stone mask of rage.

* * * * *

"Courtney, I'm so sorry." Blazer apologized tearfully for perhaps the fifth time as they reached the front gate. "I have no idea why the head office has gone insane recently, and I'm so tired of making meaningless apologies that don't change anything. But I really hope you believe me when I say that I've always rooted for you, and that I still have faith in you. And I will write you the best letter of reference possible for any new job you apply for."

"You shouldn't." she said brokenly, the first words she'd spoken since leaving the conference room. "All I've done is hurt everybody around me." Courtney slumped. "You… Cap… the team…" She sniffled. "I keep screwing up, and other people keep suffering for it. But at least I won't be doing that anymore."

"Absolutely not!" Blazer hugged her. "Just because I won't see you at work anymore doesn't mean I don't want to stay in touch! And I'm sure everybody else you've worked with will say the same thing! Especially Steve!"

"Not sure if I would." Chase's voice interrupted them as he came up to the duo. "But this firin' was such bullshit the way they handled it that even I'm startin' to wonder if maybe you ain't as bad as that fool says you are." He looked at Blazer. "Speakin' of which, that fool is screamin' for you to get back inside right now."

"Darn it!" Blazer swore. "Courtney, please just promise me that you won't disappear on us, all right? I'm going to give Steve the afternoon off as soon as I can get back inside, so just wait here for him. Or call him to meet him somewhere else. But don't-"

Courtney looked up at Blazer dejectedly, and the heroine's heart broke at the look in the defeated woman's eyes. "Tell Steve I'm sorry. And… good-bye."

Blazer reached out helplessly as Courtney vanished.

* * * * *

The unlocked door swung opened and Steve Rogers entered the small studio apartment. "Courtney?" he called out, wincing at the sight of the mostly-packed suitcase laying out in the middle of the floor.

"Steve?" The woman sitting on the bed and staring dejectedly out the window answered without turning around. "I'd forgotten you knew where my apartment was."

"Thank God you're still here." Steve gasped in relief. "And I'm going to have to thank Waterboy. Because having to come here to pick you up a new set of clothes after you got soaked is the only reason I could find this place." Steve closed and locked the door behind him and came up alongside her. "Would you really have left without saying good-bye to me?" he asked, his voice soft and hurt.

She turned to look at him as he sat down adjacent to her, her eyes full of tears. "If I'd stopped to say it to you face-to-face, then I wouldn't have ever been able to leave at all."

"Well, maybe you shouldn't leave then." Steve replied gently. "Look, I know that you've had bad experiences before with nobody believing you. Trust me, this time people will believe you. There's no way you actually betrayed us to Shroud."

"But I did." Courtney protested. "I- not the warehouse raid, no." She slumped. "But I entirely helped him do things just as bad."

"Before you joined SDN, or after?" Steve questioned, and nodded at the unspoken answer clear on her face. "So you did villain things back when you were still a villain." Steve protested. "But I already knew that about you, and I didn't care. It doesn't change anything for me to find out that Shroud was one of the villains you used to do villainy with. You've already left that life behind."

"Are you even fuckin' listening to me?!?" Courtney protested incredulously. "I just told you that I used to run with the master villain who's been fucking up the entire city and running rings around everyone, and you don't even suspect anything might be wrong? Chase is right, you're so- so deep in a relationship with me that you're completely fuckin' blind to reason!"

"Courtney, if you're a double agent then I'm the Red Skull in disguise." Steve shook his head. "And I could give you any number of logical reasons why HR's theory is absurd, but you don't need logic right now. You need to rest assured that this time, when you're falsely accused, that people will actually take your word for it." He took her hand comfortingly between his own. "And they will. I certainly will."

"I was there that night." Courtney blurted.

"When?" Steve asked gently.

"The night Robert's life was ruined." Courtney explained. "I- I didn't run with crews, not usually. But Shroud offered me an augment that would increase my lung capacity, cure my asthma. In return for which I'd have to work for him for years, paying it down."

"That augment." Steve pointed a finger at Courtney's chest. "But clearly it hasn't cured anything."

"So for a few weeks I was part of the early Red Ring, shortly after Shroud had broken out of jail." Courtney continued as if he hadn't said anything. "And then one day Shroud said that I had a chance to get out from under the entire debt free and clear, if I could only manage to do one thing." Courtney swallowed. "Place a bomb on the back of Mecha Man undetected."

"Okay." Steve nodded.

"Okay?!?" Courtney exploded. "I just told you I'm the person who ruined the whole life of and almost murdered one of our friends, and ended the career of a hero who didn't deserve a single bit of it, and you just nod at me and say 'Okay'? Are you not even fuckin' surprised?!?"

"Actually, no." Steve reassured her. "Courtney, you had a traumatic flashback just from pretending to be a villain invisibly sticking things to people backs and then me making a reference to the Mecha Man incident out loud. The date you turned yourself in and joined the Phoenix Program was barely two days after Mecha Man's defeat. And when trying to cheer up Robert once I'd done a post-incident walkdown of the whole thing with him, just like I did for you with the donut shop, and one of the first things I noted from his account was the approximately two minute window of opportunity where the armor had been stationary and restrained underneath that catwalk – just long enough for an invisible person to climb down the restraining cable, attach a bomb, and climb back up without being seen. And where there hadn't really been any other plausible way for that bomb to get there. And you were one of the very few people in the building as emotionally invested in the success of the Proto-Pulse tests as Robert was, which meant that the Mecha Man incident had to have been of great personal significance to you in some way." Steve smiled at Courtney's expression, where her eyes had been getting wider and wider throughout his speech. "I've already been pretty sure of what happened there for the past several weeks."

"… and you didn't say anything?" she gaped.

"You said that you weren't okay with talking yet." Steve replied simply. "And if you needed more time, then that was what was more important."

Courtney gave a quiet little heartbreaking sob. "I quit the moment I placed the bomb. I walked out before it even blew. And my augments stopped working the very next day… so I signed up for the Phoenix Program." She slumped. "Which just gave me the chance to fuck up the lives of more heroes. Especially you."

"You haven't done any of that." Steve protested.

"Steve, I know you." Courtney looked at him sadly. "If you're sitting here when you're supposed to be at work, then I know exactly what you did. You took your employee ID and your communicator and you told that HR guy to shove 'em both straight up his ass."

"Did you really think that I was going to let this be good-bye?" Steve confirmed her suspicion. "SDN's treatment of you was my last straw. So wherever you go, I'm coming with you."

"That's the problem!" Courtney cried. "I'm going nowhere good, and you- you could have had every opportunity, if you hadn't thrown them all away because of my worthless ass!" Her eyes leaked tears. "Chase once said that people like me were black holes. That we just sucked everything in and gave nothing back. And that's all I've been doing to you."

"That's not true." Steve denied heatedly. "Right after I arrived here, I was as miserable and alone as I'd been right after coming out of the ice. I'd barely begun to know one new world, then had it ripped away for an even stranger one I didn't even have a historical connection with, and was expected to hit the ground running. Getting a job, renting a place… that was just going through the motions. Just doing life maintenance, but not really living. You know when that changed?" He smiled gently at her. "When I met my invisible gal." He drew her softly but irresistibly into a hug. "I don't think I've ever been as happy as I've been during the time I've spent with you, and for that alone – and it's not been that alone – you'd deserve everything that I could give you."

"T-that's sweet of you to say, but… I-I don't feel it." She sobbed in his arms. "I just feel so fuckin' empty."

"It's been a whole emotional rollercoaster for you the past few months, and up until just now you haven't even been able to talk about this with anyone." Steve reassured her as they drew back. "You'll level out soon enough."

"When I started the Phoenix Program, all I wanted was for someone to look at me the same way people look at Blazer." Courtney almost whispered. "Even if it was just once, you know? I thought that'd be enough." She pulled back and looked entreatingly into Steve's eyes. "And then you came along and you looked at me exactly that way, right from the beginning. Like I was beautiful, like I was good."

"I did." Steve affirmed simply. "Because you are."

"But even when I had what I wished for, it still felt so fake!" she sniffled. "I felt fake. I couldn't stop being afraid that the light in your eyes was just you seeing a mirage. That you'd wake up one day and finally realize what a fuckin' chump you'd been played for, and then move on to- to not being stuck with me." She shook her head. "And even though I knew it couldn't last, that I was just setting myself up for a bigger crash in the end the longer I let it go on… I still couldn't let go of you. Because even just clingin' to the delusion a guy like you, and a girl like me… just being able to kid myself, just for a little while… was still better than facin' up to reality."

"Courtney." Steve kissed her forehead gently. "You're not a mirage. You're real. We are real." Steve glanced over at Courtney's bedside table, where a certain pencil drawing was just visible sticking out from underneath a book. "Remember when I drew you how I used to look? The awkward original me, not the surface appearance the serum gave me? And how you said you'd have liked to have grown up alongside that kid?" He smiled down at her. "You've already seen past my mirage, and you still stood by me. Why wouldn't I do the same for you?"

"Because you think I'm good, and I know I'm not." she shook her head. "I keep doin' different shit, sayin' different things, actin' a different way… but it's still the same old me." She slumped. "I put on new faces, make new smiles, kiss a new boy, but I don't feel any different inside. And I haven't for months."

The melancholy silence fell at her words… only to shatter at Steve's chuckle.

"The hell is so funny?" she asked incredulously.

"Months, huh?" Steve quirked a smile. "Courtney, have you noticed exactly what you've been depressed about during this entire conversation?

"Uh, fuckin' everything?" she looked at Steve confusedly.

"You're in mourning for lives that you've harmed. You regret things that you've taken and not given back. You're ashamed of the sins you've committed… or even just think you've committed." He smiled. "None of what you're feeling low over has been about not getting what you want. None of your self-criticisms are about how you didn't look out for number one enough, they've only been about how you're afraid you've let other people down. What kind of person does that?"

Courtney's jaw dropped and she blinked rapidly in realization, literally dumbstruck.

"The reason you haven't felt like you're making any progress recently on becoming a good person is because you already are one." Steve gave her the sincerest smile he possibly could. "And you have been for a lot longer than you've been giving yourself credit for."

Courtney's eyes met Steve's and held them, helplessly transfixed, before she slowly leaned forward and brought her lips against his.

At first they kissed gently, then more urgently. Steve's hands came to Courtney's waist and pulled her tightly against him as he leaned deeply into the kiss. Courtney's arms reached up and clasped as tightly around his broad shoulders as she possibly could. She pulled him on top of her as she fell backwards onto the bed with her legs coming up to clasp solidly around his waist, and the two of them cast all self-restraint to the winds for one timeless, passionate moment.

Finally they separated, each panting slightly for breath. "I've been dreamin' about this for weeks." Courtney blushed incandescently. "And it was not remotely as G-rated as your dreams, and it was all happenin' right here on this bed."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Steve asked simply.

"All that dumb shit I was thinkin' about how this had to be temporary, about how one day you'd finally wake up and leave." Courtney blinked away tears of joy. "Havin' that much of you but then havin' to give it all up soon after… that would've killed me. But- but you are staying, right? You're really staying?" she pleaded.

"If you ever want to get rid of me, you're going to have to pick me up and throw me." Steve grinned wildly down at her.

"… get those fuckin' pants off." she replied hoarsely, as her smile turned positively molten. "'Cause I'm showin' you around all those curves I promised right now."

* * * * *

"It's a good thing you had a contraceptive implant." Steve admitted embarrassedly as he came out of the shower and began to dress. "Because I really did not stop to think about protection."

Courtney giggled as she cheerfully ogled the view from her vantage point on the nearby bed, having showered and cleaned up and dressed first. "Thinking was definitely not on our agenda there for a while, no." She winced slightly as she moved. "Did the serum boost that kind of endurance for you too, big guy? Because I'm certainly not complaining, but we might want to go a little slower next time."

"Uh, is it not normal to recover that quickly?" Steve questioned.

"Oh, right." Courtney chuckled as she remembered Steve's lack of dating history. "No, in my experience that's definitely not the average. Which only makes me an even luckier girl, because you were awesome."

"I'm glad you had a nice time." Steve replied happily.

"Steve, if I'd had much nicer of a time-" she blushed cutely, and then chuckled at being interrupted by her growling stomach. "Okay, if I'm this hungry then you must be starving. Come on, let's go get something."

"That pizza place is within walking distance, isn't it?" Steve agreed. "I could definitely eat."

Serious conversation did not resume until about halfway through the second pizza. "This was wonderful-" Courtney corrected herself. "Is wonderful, and will keep on being wonderful, but… the overall situation is still not." she sobered.

"Shroud." Steve nodded. "Just because we don't have jobs anymore doesn't mean he's not still out there."

"Yeah." She sighed. "And all our friends are still stuck dealin' with him."

"Which reminds me." Steve pulled out his phone and blinked hard at the sheer amount of backlogged texts and missed calls on it. "Is your phone exploding too?"

"Probably will be when I turn it on again." Courtney winced in anticipation.

"I'm just going to send a group text to everybody that I caught up to you and we're fine and I'll talk more tomorrow when we know more about what's going on, if that's all right with you." Steve said.

"Yeah, do that." Courtney agreed. "I'm a little surprised Blazer hasn't done a flyby of my place yet looking for me, I really must've left her frantic."

"Lucky for us that it's not quite end of shift yet." Steve blushed slightly as he composed and sent the text. "Because I don't think we remembered to close the curtains either."

"Aheh, whoops?" Courtney flushed.

"Okay, on the more serious front – the first thing we need to do is move." Steve began to think out loud. "We have to presume that Shroud knows or can find out where we both live, and we don't even have whatever protection working at SDN was anymore. And you used to work for him, however briefly, and then turned against him. He might be holding a grudge about that."

Courtney winced slightly as the click of a revolver dry-firing echoed in her mind. "He is."

"What's wrong?" Steve noticed her reaction.

"About three weeks ago – the night before we did that classroom exercise, in fact - Shroud and Toxic showed up at my place. Cornered me in the laundry room." Courtney said slowly. "He said that he wanted to me to work for him again – to double-agent for him for real, just like that HR idiot accused me of doing. He said that if I did then he'd turn the implant on again, fix my lungs."

"And he just took no for an answer?" Steve marveled.

"I love that you don't even ask what my answer was." Courtney smiled wistfully. "And he…" She flinched and reached out to Steve, grasping at his hand for comfort. "Shroud has this thing where if he really wants to intimidate someone, he'll play Russian Roulette with 'em. Has this big old antique revolver he always likes to use for it." She looked Steve directly in the eyes, trying to will him to stay calm and hear her out. "He put the muzzle to my head while Toxic had me pinned and said 'For every further word of defiance, I pull the trigger once'." she imitated his voice.

"My God." Steve swallowed hard. "What did you do?"

"I told him to eat shit and die." Courtney flinched at the memory.

"Four trigger pulls? And you survived?" Steve gasped. "Why didn't you say yes? Or pretend to say yes?"

"I've seen people try lying to Shroud." Courtney shook her head. "He sees through 'em every single time, even when he'd have no possible way of knowing. It's like he's got a lie detector built into that sensor helmet of his or something."

"Telepathy?" Steve asked. "I've heard that's possible."

"So have I, but I doubt it. If he could read minds he wouldn't need to send people out to recon shit for him, but that was most of the work I did for him in those few weeks before the Mecha Man thing happened." Courtney shook her head. "And I didn't say yes for real because…" She smiled at him sadly. "Because the first thing he'd have told me to do would be to hurt you. Or Blazer, or Robert, or… anybody."

"And you actually thought, for even a moment, that you weren't really a hero?" Steve gaped at her incredulously. "Okay, first off, I have met maybe three other women in my entire life who could do what you did and their names were Peggy Carter, Natasha Romanov, and Maria Hill. And I've already told you some things about some of them, and when I tell you the rest you will appreciate just exactly what kind of heroic company you're already traveling in."

"First off implies a second off." Courtney desperately tried to play off just how moved she'd been by Steve's last statement.

"Second off, right at this moment I really want to break their heads open with my bare hands." Steve breathed out heavily, fighting for self-control.

"After the fourth trigger pull Shroud finally acknowledged that I just wasn't going to do it and there was no way he could make me." Courtney eventually continued. "So he said something about not wanting to spook SDN before some other shit he was working on was ready, and that's why he wasn't going to just kill me then. Then he gave up and left."

"Why didn't you tell someone you'd been attacked?" Steve asked softly.

"Because he also said that if I breathed a word about it to anyone, then 'those whom you least desire to learn more about you will instead learn everything about you'" she quoted. "And back then I was still afraid of that."

"Come here." Steve reached over and gave Courtney another hug, finding words inadequate.

"So, what's our next move?" she eventually asked.

"First we rent a truck and move you out of your place right after we finish eating, and then we clean out my place tonight." Steve decided. "We find a new place and a storage locker to stash whatever we have that doesn't fit in that new place. We pay in cash and use fake ID or no ID."

"I know how to do that, no problem." Courtney acknowledged.

"And after we finish that, then we start figuring out how we're going to find this skull-faced bastard." Steve swore vehemently. "Because we already needed to do something about that guy, but when he hurt you like that? Then he made it personal."

* * * * *

"The Sardine." Visi muttered as her and Cap lurked in the gloom of almost-midnight and watched the seedy bar where it squatted on the corner of an alleyway and the side street. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." she orated theatrically.

"You sure any of Shroud's people will be drinking here?" he asked.

"It's the villain bar in Torrance. If the Red Ring's making a dominance play then no way they won't have their people showing the flag here. Besides, if you want to drink in costume without a long-ass commute downtown then it's either here, Crypto Night, or sit around your house with a six pack." Visi explained.

"This is the place Flambae invited us to come drink at one time?" Cap said incredulously.

"Like I said, there's not too many places in town you can drink in costume. Particularly not with the entire team. Generally the guys have enough villain cred still built up from their prior career they can get in and out of there without more than the occasional friendly barfight but I, uh, would probably get in a non-friendly barfight." Visi admitted shamefully.

"You were a villain for eight years, that's longer than many of them." Cap doubted. "You didn't build up any street cred of your own?"

"Remember when that corporate slug called me 'Invisibitch'? That wasn't him trying to be sexist, that had legitimately been my villain name. And no, it wasn't a tag that was hung on me by other people, it was one that I'd picked for myself." Visi recounted mournfully. "As a brag… and a warning label." She sighed. "Short version is, I really didn't make any friends in the villain community while I was working there."

"Good thing we're not going inside then." Cap nodded. "All right, the bouncer can't see us from where we are, so now we just wait."

"Eugh, I hate stakeouts." Visi moaned. "So much not doing anything."

"You never did finish telling me about how that book series ended." Cap said amusedly.

Visi glared cutely up at him. "Right now you're as transparent as bleach and twice as irritating."

"I'm amazed you actually had the attention span to finish that sentence. It had two whole clauses." Cap teased back.

Visi tried to maintain her glare but couldn't, and eventually snorted in laughter. "Jerk-" She straightened up. "We've got a pigeon. White-haired woman, the telekinetic who joined up with them after the prison break. I think they called her 'Psyche-Out'."

"Parking is horrible around here if she had to leave her car that far down the street." Cap acknowledged as he pulled on a black ski mask.

"Wait here a minute, then start the distraction." Visi ordered, and faded out of sight.

Sixty seconds later Cap strode openly down the sidewalk, the mask on his face, and walked directly up to the hulking figure of the serpent-faced man who was the Sardine's doorman tonight. "Who the hell are you?"

"You don't recognize me? I'm the Terrorizer!" Cap protested angrily.

"I don't know you, and I don't like not knowing people. Beat it, or get beaten." The doorman looked down at Cap from his six greater inches of height and opened his mouth, searing energy flaring menacingly over his tongue as he readied his breath weapon.

"You can't talk to me like that. I'm the crimelord of Tulsa!" Cap hammed it up. "I was invited down here to transact very serious bus-"

The bouncer's hamlike fist took Cap across the chops, and Cap deliberately turned with the punch and sold the fall as he went sprawling. "Get lost, poser. It takes more than a dime store costume and a bullshit origin story to make a real supervillain." The doorman sneered, and Cap picked himself up and cringed away, to the laughter of the several patrons waiting to get in who'd stopped to watch the show.

As soon as Cap made it safely around the corner Visi faded into visibility alongside him, triumphantly holding up Psyche-Out's cell phone.

"Well done, now let's get moving." Cap congratulated her as they hiked down the sidewalk. "I want to find somewhere we can use this where we won't risk being caught on camera. I just hope this actually works."

Several blocks away and almost half an hour later, the two of them were standing on the top floor of an incomplete construction site. The number they'd hoped to find had been one of the contacts listed in Psyche-Out's phone, and Cap had finished sending multiple texts to that number from his own phone with no response. After waiting a short while to confirm the results, Visi finally typed in and sent a single text from the villainess' phone while Cap remained hidden inside a nearby room, then went invisible and waited in a shadowy corner of the roof.

Situation's come up. Need immediate RV, these coords. Stealthy approach.

Barely four minutes later a winged figure swooped silently out of the sky and did a discreet low circle over the building, methodically checking for possible ambushes and eyewitnesses before landing. She touched down warily, her weapons at the ready as she peered warily around.

"Hello, Coupe." the materializing Visi greeted her, with her jacket off and her shirt pulled up just far enough to clearly show her Red Ring augmentations. "We need to talk."

* * * * *

Author's Note: HR guy may have put himself out on a limb, but he's too proud to not saw it off regardless. And even if he might or might not be legally vulnerable later, he's still pissed and cocky enough to try his rationalizations on right now.

Not that Steve's in a mood at the moment for clever legal maneuvers anyway. Seriously, he was that close to punching the guy. Didn't, but almost did!

But hey, at least these two crazy kids finally took the next step in their relationship and Visi finally got all the hugs, over everything she's been feeling guilty about. Which, yes, Steve had mostly figured out chapters ago anyway.

'I was originally part of the Red Ring a short while before the Mecha Man job came up' is as valid an interpretation of the way Visi tells her backstory in episode 7 as the other way, so I went with it.

What an emotional roller coaster of a day these two crazy kids have been having, eh? From the depths of despair to the heights of euphoria, then back down to Earth. But at least they've finally cleared the decks and Visi's finally able to accept that no, she really is loved just the way she is and there is no dark secret in her past left unrevealed and that will make her boyfriend suddenly abandon her. Visi's basically hit her endgame character development and we're not even to the equivalent of episode 6 yet. Plus, of course, we are now going well off the canon track.

And no, Cap wasn't the only one having a dream. Courtney had the canon episode 4 dream. In fact, she's been having them for a little while. She just didn't bring it up before because, well, you know.

Regarding the moment, there's a persistent rumor - I think it may be dev commentary, but not sure - that there were spicy scenes cut from the game and that the episode 7 locker room moment would have been one of them if you'd been far enough down Visi's romance path. That it wouldn't have just been a last desperate kiss she tried for once the final walls had come down, but instead she'd try for everything. So once the final walls came down here, then everything was entirely going to happen. *g*

And Steve finally finds out about Courtney's bravest moment, and the comparison/compliment he gave her is entirely sincere. (Before anyone asks why the list wasn't four names long, remember that he hasn't actually met Sharon yet.)

The telekinetic villainess is canon, you glimpse her briefly during the big fight at the end. She doesn't have a canon name, so I threw one in.

cliffc999 · Tuesday at 10:02 PM

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 44

"You work for Shroud as well?" Coupe exclaimed. "What, were you a mole the entire time?"

"Worked." Visi shook her head as she pulled her shirt down. "Past tense. And then Shroud screwed me over… just like he's done to you."

At that revelation Coupe immediately looked around suspiciously. "You would never have let her come alone, Captain. Show yourself!"

"We're not here to fight." Cap said, stepping slowly out of a nearby doorway with his hands raised and empty. "Shroud tricked you into thinking you'd been abandoned by your teammates so you'd be open to his recruitment offer. And we have evidence."

"Here." Visi immediately picked up the thread before Coupe could protest. "Check these two phones. One of them is Psyche-Out's, the other is the Captain's. Check the recent texts."

"Set them both down there, then move over to where he is. Stay visible at all times." Coupe ordered, and Visi did as she was told and then carefully walked over to be adjacent to Cap.

"I picked the top of a building to meet on precisely so that you could leave in an instant and we'd never catch up." Cap reassured her. "This isn't an ambush."

Coupe acknowledged that with a silent glare and picked up both phones and carefully looked down at them, keeping both heroes in the corner of her vision at all times. She frowned, and then looked more closely.

"… all of these texts were sent within the last twenty minutes. But I only received the one from Psyche-Out's phone." Coupe acknowledged, and then deliberately typed out a test message on Cap's phone and sent it to her own number… to no result.

Coupe's stared down at the damning screen with an impassive face, then reached into her pocket and withdrew her own phone. Her nostrils flared as she breathed deeply in and out, once, then twice. Slowly, methodically, she pressed the 'Off' button on her phone to power it down and carefully returned it to her pocket-

-immediately before explosively flinging a shower of wing-knives at a nearby wall. "Son of a BITCH!"

"Oh, he is." Visi agreed grimly. "Bastard promised me an implant to cure my asthma, then turned it off the day after I finished paying my debt. I don't even know why he jerked me around like that, he'd already gotten what he wanted. I joined SDN right after because…"

"You'd needed somewhere to be, and your old life had proven… insufficient." Coupe agreed quietly.

"Did Shroud tell you who took down the assassins that your old employer had sent after you?" Cap asked.

"All he told me was that it had been taken care of." Coupe replied.

"Well, it was taken care of." Visi said acidly. "He just 'forgot' to mention that it was us that had done it." She hauled out her phone. "If you want proof, I actually saved copies of those idiots' booking photos just to laugh at. Those were some of the stupidest looking costumes I'd ever seen."

"The Serpent Society." Coupe raised a mocking eyebrow at the pictures on Visi's phone. "Yes, they did dress like idiots. Although several of them were formidably lethal idiots."

"Blazer suspended our taking the customer service calls for two whole days while the team worked full-time on finding those guys and taking them down before they could find you." Cap explained. "Losing your job was a stupid and unfair decision made by the SDN head office, but nobody you actually worked with wanted to cut you loose… or leave you without support."

"Punch Up?" Coupe asked softly.

"Was going nuts trying to get in touch with you." Visi assured her softly. "He still tries from time to time, but whatever virus Shroud put in your electronics is running one hell of a communications blackout on you. Even the new burner phone he tried calling you from apparently didn't work. Whatever Shroud tagged you with must have at least some kind of semi-intelligent call screening capability."

"All he ever got was voicemail. Shroud's program probably sends every call not from a whitelisted number direct to voicemail first while silencing your ringer, then deletes the message if the voice recognition is from its blacklist." Cap speculated.

Coupe's expression turned downcast. "When you see him next, please tell him that I'm sorry I was such a fool."

"Why not tell him yourself?" Visi asked quietly.

"… because I can't go back." Coupe mourned as she began to pace. "The terms of my parole have been violated multiple times over by now. If I return to SDN, I only return to prison."

"That's not what we were asking." Cap surprised her. "Because right now there's three people standing on this roof who got fired by SDN head office for no valid reason."

"Technically two people. You quit, only I got fired." Visi replied.

"Seriously? What are they even doing over there?" Coupe puzzled.

"At this point I'm seriously considering the possibility that Shroud has compromised or is collaborating with someone at SDN headquarters." Cap replied. "Have you seen anything that might indicate that?"

"Shroud explains very little about his plans to any of us beyond the parts that we individually need to know. And we are only assembled as a team when a mission requires multiple supervillains. Toxic might know the answer to your question, but I don't. My own assignments to date have largely been to take down single targets across LA's organized crime community, or to act as an on-call mobile reserve for other squads that need support." Coupe explained.

"No single big villain headquarters for us to go raid, huh?" Cap said disgruntledly.

"The sheer amount of parts and resources that Shroud has had us accumulating – both by hijacking and by black market purchases – means he almost certainly has a large facility somewhere, one with significant manufacturing capacity." Coupe informed the duo. "But I don't know where it is. Only the ones who have been working with Shroud for a long while get to know. The rest, including me, are still in a probationary period. I can try to find out-"

"Bad idea." Visi argued. "Shroud has some kind of lie detecting power or tech. I wasn't in the Red Ring very long, but I was there enough weeks to see it in action several times. If you try double agenting, odds are way too high he'll find you out."

"I can't come in." Coupe shook her head. "It's far too easy to have someone killed in prison, and right now there's no way I can avoid at least some time in a holding cell while you negotiate with the authorities. And the instant I turned myself in Shroud would be certain that I am betraying him, as opposed to my merely being at risk of suspicion now. It's actually safer for me, at least in the short term, if I try to brazen it out."

"Unfortunately, you're right." Cap agreed ruefully. "I'm sorry for putting you on the spot with this, but our window was limited. And just letting you keep on going without even trying to tell you the truth-"

"No, you couldn't do that." Coupe agreed. "And so we are all three of us now in a situation with no ideal options. We have no employers, no resources beyond ourselves, and no backup."

"In this context, no employers is actually as much of a benefit as a limitation." Cap said. "We don't have to give a crap about SDN's idiot rules anymore. And that means we're free to do what's right."

"Right and wrong are… things I still don't fully understand." Coupe shook her head slightly. "But retribution against those who have wronged me - wronged us - that I understand very well."

"Well, we all have to start somewhere." Visi grinned crookedly. "I mean, hey, you remember what Invisibitch used to be like and look where I've ended up!"

"And as for 'no backup', judging by how they've been blowing up our phones since we got bounced earlier today I think the only reason the Z-Team hasn't had a mass mutiny yet is because they have to stay out of jail too." Cap reassured Coupe. "So even if it's going to be entirely after hours and off the books, once we find them a target to hit I'm pretty sure we can rely on them all piling in to help hit it."

"We're gonna talk to them tomorrow, and also Blazer and Robert if we can." Visi agreed. "But before we did that, we wanted to find out if we could tell them about you."

"Understandable. And yes, I would look forward to… working with them again." Coupe agreed quietly. "Anything else?"

"As much as they try to make us – or their paying subscribers – believe it, SDN isn't actually the only law in town." Cap said. "Now I just fell out of a wormhole so I personally don't know anyone to talk to, and I doubt you two have a lot of friends in the law enforcement community-"

"Yeah, we're both just a little unpopular at cop bars." Visi drawled amusedly.

"But Blazer or Robert should know someone that we can trust." Cap continued. "And if we can find a useful contact there, then you can hope to trade testimony against Shroud for immunity. Hopefully that won't take more than a few days for us to set up."

"What do we do in the meantime?" Coupe questioned.

"Our worst limitation so far has been that we're working almost entirely blind." Cap nodded. "We can only guess vaguely at Shroud's ultimate goals, and we don't know nearly enough about his powers, his resources, or who else he might be working with or have paid off. For as long as he can keep us from knowing anything about him while he learns more and more about us, he can keep playing chessmaster with us as easily as he's been doing so far. But the thing about chess is, the rules of the game assume that you can always see all of the pieces."

"For as long as he does not yet discover that I am working with you, we will know at least one significant thing that he doesn't." Coupe agreed.

"Two significant things." Cap nodded. "I'm from another dimension, so the only thing Shroud knows about my past career are things I've told SDN, or demonstrated while I'm working there. And so far I've just had to be a cross between a cop and a community outreach worker, so that's all he'll really know about me. But this is now a counter-terrorism case - literally, thanks to that truck bomb - and that's how I'm going to try and work it from now on. Hopefully he won't be anticipating that either."

"I knew that you hadn't been lying about having been an operative." Coupe nodded in vindication. "That skillset overlaps enough with mine that like could recognize like."

"I picked up a burner for you. Flip phone, the dumbest model I could find, so hopefully it'll be too dumb to hack. Still wouldn't recommend actually carrying it into Shroud's presence, though." Cap reached into his jacket pocket and handed Coupe the burner phone. "This is for emergency use only, but keep it on when you can so we can emergency page you if need be. For regular contacts we'll use pen and paper. We'll both leave any messages on the roof of the diner at 45th and Lake, and we'll both try to check it at least once a day. After I check in with the others and find out what we've got to work with we'll try to set up something more robust for drops, this is just to start out."

"What do I do in the meantime?" Coupe asked.

"First off, don't try direct action against Shroud." Cap shook his head. "Even disregarding the ethical component, your odds just aren't good enough."

"That's not a knock on your skill." Visi said hurriedly. "But it's not like Shroud doesn't know what you did for a living. So I'm pretty sure 'keep the former assassin in plain view at all times' is something that never leaves his mind when he's meeting with you, any more than he ever gave an unguarded back to me. The instant you break line-of-sight he'll go to instant red alert, and since he always keeps Toxic sticking to him like a leech during villain meets doing the job from the front is also a bad idea."

"As very tempting as the thought of solving the problem expeditiously was, I had already figured that out for myself." Coupe agreed. "Unfortunately."

"So yeah, keep your head down, don't take any risks." Visi continued. "And if Shroud makes you and you can't escape, then cooperate. If he forces you to feed us false intel, then feed away."

"Your duress signal if that happens is to not remember to ask us if Punch Up is still acting like an idiot in any message." Cap went on. "Even if Shroud dictates your messages word for word, he shouldn't know to dictate the 'still safe' signal. And when you have time, try to summarize everything you've already learned that you think might be useful and leave it in the drop. Oh, and it goes without saying, but if Shroud is putting hack programs in your electronics then don't say anything even remotely incriminating on that phone."

"It might not even be safe to talk near it, but there's nothing we can do about that right now." Visi admitted. "And depending on how good Shroud's lie detector is, even all these precautions might not save you. You sure you want to take this risk?"

"Whether I come in now or I try to remain in place, either way it's a risk to my life that we can't calculate." Coupe denied. "And only one of those risks lets me keep fighting."

"I certainly understand that." Cap reluctantly agreed. "Anything else either of you can think of that we need to cover right now?"

"If you've been fired, what are you two doing for money?" Coupe asked.

"We've got savings." Visi denied.

"I know how much SDN was paying you, and how short a time the Captain has had to save anything." Coupe denied with a twitch of her lip. "However, crime has been paying rather well recently – the one character flaw Shroud cannot be accused of is miserliness. I haven't even begun to spend what share of the proceeds I've already earned, and I like to live simply anyway. Check the drop site tomorrow evening, by then I should have ten thousand dollars in cash there waiting for you."

"There's no way we'll be able to pay that back any time soon." Cap denied.

"I prefer to think of it as Shroud helping to fund his own downfall." Coupe retorted. "So long as it's spent towards the goal of giving that bastard what he's got coming to him, you won't need to repay a dime."

"Then thank you, Coupe." Visi said warmly. "I'm sorry we weren't better friends when we were working together."

"The people who know me personally get to call me Janelle." she smiled slightly.

"I'm Steve. She's Courtney." Steve smiled back. "Nice to meet you, Janelle."

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 45

"Mr. Saunders, please explain to me how you so epically screwed up what should have been a simple task." The furious Vice-President of Marketing glared at the man helplessly cringing where he stood in front of the SDN executive's desk.

"You told me to make sure she was fired, no matter what." the HR representative pleaded. "And I did that!"

"The purpose of sending her back to jail where she belonged was to split that little tramp away from Captain America so he'd stop clinging to the Torrance branch office like it was his only port in a storm and start actually looking outward!" the VP replied. "In light of that, did it not begin to occur to you that perhaps you should have begun to exercise a little more subtlety as soon as he arrived to witness events?"

"As soon as Blonde Blazer unaccountably chose to ignore such an alarming sign of an infiltrator in her own shop, I had very limited options! She was supposed to immediately bounce Invisigal herself!" Saunders begged. "I didn't know that I should have aborted as soon as things went even the slightest bit off-script instead of trying to recover-!"

"Well, then we've both just had a very unpleasant lesson in what happens when you assume that other people will only act like they're supposed to." the VP glared frostily at the man. "Because not only did you manage to throw the baby out with the bathwater, you've also potentially exposed the company to a very serious lawsuit."

"I've what?" Saunders blinked confusedly.

"… what are they teaching you people in HR?" the man moaned. "The short version is, I'm afraid to even tell Legal what just happened because that will result in the VP of Legal personally naming his next two ulcers after both of us!" He shook his head. "You've given any six-weeks-out-of-law-school idiot operating on a contingent fee a gift-wrapped opportunity to take SDN to the cleaners. She's got us over a barrel for violating both the medical records privacy laws and the Americans with Disabilities Act, and those are the two single worst third rails of death you can ever touch in litigation… and on top of that, you managed to have two of the most well-renowned heroes in the entire company present as eyewitnesses to the whole thing! At this moment we need to pray that both Invisigal and Blazer are too ignorant of the legal subtleties to actually know what I just said, or else Legal's only option will be to offer our least favorite asthmatic felon at least seven figures in settlement to hopefully avoid the company being on the hook for at least eight figures in punitive damages!" the man roared. "If not more!"

"Oh my God." the HR rep turned pale and trembled.

"The only reason I'm not burning you yet is because we don't know yet if she knows to actually call a lawyer." The VP hissed at him. "If we're very very lucky, she'll just crawl off to find a new gutter to live in and never know that she had a free chance to use SDN as her personal Powerball jackpot. But if she does sue us… well, then it's a good thing that I never gave you any instructions in writing, or where anybody else could hear us."

"Sir, you promised-" Saunders begged.

"You promised me that you could handle this, and obviously you haven't." the VP snorted. "When that warehouse exploded and they asked your office to review the files of all those involved, and in the process you thought you'd found the 'silver bullet' you knew I'd been wanting… I just wish I'd had the brains to throw you the hell out of my office as soon as you came to me with your cockamamie plan." The VP furiously clutched at his hair. "As it turns out, you didn't even think to check her file closely enough to realize that she wouldn't actually be sent to prison if she lost her slot in the Phoenix Program, you merely assumed she would be! And that's what you'd told me as well! So now that you've completely fucked the whole thing up both in theory and in practice, you still want me to risk my ass covering for you? Do you need to schedule yourself for a drug test?"

"You approved this entire plan!" Saunders protested heatedly.

"Because I'd assumed that you, the actual HR specialist, knew what the fuck you were talking about regarding Human Resources matters!" The VP denied heatedly. "The more fool I! So if SDN is fortunate enough to escape the consequences here, which I desperately pray that we are, then you escape along with me. But if we're not that fortunate then the consequences all of these mistakes – and they were your mistakes – will be all on you." He snorted. "And don't even think of trying to burn me first. You have no proof, and you've already clearly demonstrated that you're just not good enough at this game."

"And Captain America?" Saunders desperately persisted. "If we can-"

"After what you did? I can't possibly imagine what he sees in her but he's obviously made up his mind that where she goes, he goes." The VP snorted. "And offering to immediately re-hire her – even to promote her along with him, however absurd a thought that might be - would only be further admission of our guilt useable in any future lawsuit, so we can't even risk that. Clearly they didn't hire the Captain for his brains or his good taste, but what's done is done."

* * * * *

"Do you have any idea how worried we've been?!?" Robert almost shouted at Courtney.

"Actually yeah!" she protested, before slumping down in her seat on the picnic table in the park where they'd arranged to meet during lunch hour. "I'm sorry I ghosted you guys yesterday, but I couldn't stop freaking out. Being targeted by a witch hunt brought up some really bad memories. It took me hours to stop spiraling."

"Well thank God that Steve caught up to you then." Robert looked at the man sitting adjacent to Courtney. "I went by your apartment last night and Blazer went by hers, but you were both gone. What happened?"

"We moved out." Steve explained. "We didn't know if Shroud would start targeting his more vulnerable opposition… and without SDN, that included us. We're trying to set up a new place that's a little harder to find."

"Sounds paranoid to me, but then again I'm not the one with the military and intelligence background." Robert acknowledged.

"Is Blazer not coming? We invited both you guys." Courtney asked.

"She had to stop and get- ah, there she is." Robert answered.

Both Steve and Courtney turned to see a beautiful brown-haired woman walking up to their table. Steve's artists' eye immediately spotted the facial resemblance while Courtney was still trying to catch up.

"That's not just changing your hair, you're at least two inches shorter and your muscle tone is entirely different as well." Steve analyzed. "You were the other person Robert mentioned knowing whose powers made them look different?"

"Yes." the woman replied with Blazer's voice. "Hi. I'm Mandy." She smiled at them both.

Courtney looked back and forth between Mandy and Steve. "Oh God, you're even more drop-dead gorgeous with your powers turned off and you're really a brunette." she moaned. "I am so lucky Robert ran into you first."

Everybody else at the table, even Steve, shared a chuckle at that.

"I just wish they hadn't made my hero name 'Blonde Blazer', then maybe I'd be less self-conscious about it." Mandy acknowledged embarrassedly.

"To get down to business, the bad news is that you're not getting your job back." Robert began soberly. "Mandy was on the phone reporting our idiot friend from HR as far up the chain as she could reach, but all she got was stonewalling. Nobody would firmly commit to backing that idiot's decision, but nobody would actually reverse it either."

"The good news is, Sonar caught me up this morning on several things about HIPAA – the federal laws that govern medical information privacy rights, among other things – and the ADA that I hadn't known." Mandy continued. "The short version is, what happened to you was done so incorrectly and blatantly that the punitive damages from any lawsuit would mean you'd never have to work another day in your life. We are talking tens of millions of dollars, at minimum. And with Phenomaman and I both testifying to how that idiot was stupid enough to say the quiet part out loud, winning the case would be a slam dunk."

"Wait, what?" Courtney goggled in shock.

"I thought what they'd done was playing more than a little fast and loose, but I hadn't known it was that bad." Steve acknowledged. "But to be honest, our old jobs were the least important item on our agenda right now. Leading off with our number one item of business, we met Coupe last night and we managed to convince her about how Shroud had tricked her into cutting herself off."

"Wow." Mandy blinked. "Maybe you two should lose your jobs more often if it gets this kind of results." she joked.

"The bad news is, Coupe can't come back." Courtney said. "Because the way things are now, if she does come back then she goes right back into custody. And then Shroud knows she tried to quit him and she gets prison shanked."

"They're right." Robert said to Mandy. "That's exactly what he'd do."

"But she's also in danger if she stays there, because Shroud's not stupid and he possibly has some type of lie detection powers." Steve reached into the tote bag sitting next to him and came out with a manila folder. "That's a summary of everything Courtney can remember from the few weeks she spent working for Shroud before joining SDN, plus what Coupe wrote down for us about her own experiences. Right now we're assuming Shroud can hack basically anything – just wait until you hear about the job he did on Coupe's phone – so please don't enter this into any computers or spread it around too widely. But hopefully it'll give your own investigations a starting point."

"It also leads into our next request, which is to find a way to get Coupe out before Shroud realizes she's a double agent." Courtney continued. "We're praying that Mandy knows someone relatively senior in law enforcement or the DA's office who can set up a new immunity deal for Coupe – her testimony against the Red Ring in return for not going back to jail."

"Try the FBI as well, if you know anybody there." Steve suggested. "Guys like Shroud don't survive without intel sources of their own, and he might have people in the police. Hell, given all the suspicious decisions coming down from headquarters recently I've been wondering if he has someone inside at SDN. But he might not have thought ahead enough to realize that his truck bomb stunt the other day would escalate him from crime boss to domestic terrorist, so hopefully he hasn't concentrated on the local field office yet."

"Inside SDN? No wonder you were worried about Shroud possibly having your addresses." Robert realized.

"I doubt that what happened to you is because of that." Mandy shook her head. "If nothing else, you've just proven that losing your jobs has only made you more dangerous. If Shroud really wanted to counter you both then he should have made sure you'd still have to waste as much of your time as possible punching the clock."

"I think that's what Steve meant." Robert said. "Not the recent firing, but the headquarters directives we've been getting since even before the Red Ring case broke open. They've been doing nothing but waste our time and get in our way. And sure, there's a saying about never attribute to deliberate malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, but-"

"There's also a saying about how even paranoids have enemies." Mandy admitted ruefully. "I'll go back over the recent corporate nonsense again and try to see if there's a pattern there that might support what you're saying. As well as try to figure out why Courtney was so recently and viciously targeted, because while I still don't see how that makes sense for Shroud to do it you're right in that it has to make sense to somebody."

"Thank you." Steve said. "Sorry to dump so much on you right away, but things are moving pretty fast."

"One more thing." Courtney began nervously, and Steve took her hand reassuringly.

"What's wrong?" Mandy asked.

"Like we'd just said, I used to work for Shroud before joining SDN." Courtney began mournfully. "And one of the things I did there – my last job for him, in fact – you really need to know about."

"Her asthma had been getting worse. Shroud offered her a cybernetic implant that was supposed to cure it. She'd been getting desperate." Steve broke in insistently.

"Let me tell it, please." Courtney almost whispered, before forcing herself to look Robert square in the face. "That night. In the steel mill. I planted the bomb on your suit." She forced down her trembling.

Robert's expression immediately went blank. "So that's how it got there." He said grimly. "I'd never been able to figure that part out." He glared at Steve. "How long have you known?"

"I suspected shortly after you'd given me the play-by-play of that incident." Steve replied forthrightly. "I found out for certain only yesterday, when Courtney was finally able to talk about it."

"And did you even think of coming to me with your suspicion?" Robert protested, as Courtney shrank slightly back.

"No I didn't." Steve shut him down immediately. "Not for a single second. I didn't enjoy making that choice between you two, but there was no doubt in my mind that protecting Courtney was my first priority. You're my friend – our friend - but she's my best girl." Steve looked meaningfully at Mandy and then back to Robert. "What would you have done in my shoes?"

"Robert." Mandy said softly, entreatingly, as she put her hand on his arm.

"I'm so fuckin' sorry." Courtney blinked away silent tears. "And I know saying that doesn't mean shit, but I am really so fuckin' sorry I ever did it. That's why I left Shroud and joined the Phoenix Program. I couldn't deal with what I'd done. I wanted to leave it all behind." She looked up at Robert again. "But it just came around full circle on me anyway. I guess we can never escape having to pay for who we used to be."

"I just- I have no idea what the fuck to do with this. Because it's a lot. It's really a whole fuckin' lot." Robert swore.

"You don't have to do anything." Courtney sighed. "You don't owe me any forgiveness. Nothing I do will ever make up for what I've already done to you. I almost murdered you. I took away everything you'd ever worked for. I gave you the single worst day of your entire life."

"Right now, I'm thinking that it was the single worst day of both your lives." Mandy interjected compassionately as Robert turned to look his girlfriend directly in the eyes.

"… yeah, I guess it was." Robert agreed eventually, turning back to Courtney. He reached out to touch her fingertips with his own. "Mandy's right. We already knew that you used to work for him, and we'd already accepted that that didn't mean you weren't on our side now. It shouldn't change anything if your last job for Shroud happened to involve me."

"Shouldn't?" Steve asked worriedly.

"Mecha Man was all that I had." Robert sorrowed. "Losing the suit… I almost didn't survive it." He looked sideways at Mandy again. "And if a nice lady hadn't come to help me out, I don't think I would have. But if I hadn't lost the suit then I'd never have met her in the first place. Or the team, or you guys. So that's why I'm not sure what to do with this. Because what do you even call it when losing your whole world only helps you find the woman you love?"

Steve raised an eyebrow at Robert. "How do you think I felt?" he sympathized, and the tableau froze for a long moment before breaking out in quiet laughter.

* * * * *

Author's Note: My problem in composing the upcoming 'Steve goes full SHIELD on the problem' bit is that since I am not actually an expert in counter-terrorism, I need to take extra care not to write the next part stupidly. Hence the slightly slower update rate while I work that bit out. But I can at least start the setup here, and I do.

'It was the worst moment of my life too' is of course from Robby and Miguel's reconciliation scene in season 5 over Robby having accidentally broken Miguel's back in season 2 of 'Cobra Kai', one of my very favorite TV shows.

I would like to thank all of my readers who helped explain to me the legal ramifications here, which I had originally been largely ignorant of. Fortunately I was able to fold them into the plot without having to substantially change my story outline – after all, Steve and Courtney aren't even thinking of things like lawsuits now, they've got a supervillain to bust. They can do that other stuff later.

And yes, the root of at least one part of the corpo stupidity is revealed as having been just a stupid petty plot. As for the other corpo stupidity, it might be, it might not be. We'll find out.

cliffc999 · Wednesday at 12:38 PM

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 45

"The hell happened to you guys?" Visi looked at the bedraggled Z-Team in shock. Everybody was visibly disheveled, and even Robert had a bloody nose and skinned knuckles.

"The team really needed to blow off steam after all the recent crap, so they chose this evening to go out drinking. I went along to try and keep them out of trouble, and…" Robert trailed off ironically.

"Let me guess, you went to the Sardine." Cap stated as he and Visi sat down at one of the tables outside the taco joint in their civilian clothes. Flambae had texted the duo to ask them to meet the team there late in the evening. "And the inevitable barfight happened."

"You've already been there?" Flambae exclaimed.

"We were staking the place out last night, looking for any of Shroud's people." Cap replied. "But we didn't go inside."

"Should've come in with us tonight, then, because you missed the fun part!" Prism said cheerfully. "You should've seen Mecha Boy here go at it! Man was a barfightin' machine!"

"Wait, you guys know?!?" Visi blinked incredulously. "And you haven't set him on fire yet?" she turned to Flambae.

"I almost did." Flambae admitted sheepishly. "But fortunately for myself I remembered in time that I would probably not get away with trying something that stupid twice."

"Fortunately for yourself?" Robert gave Flambae the side-eye. "After you cleared the decks regarding secrets and all of that earlier today, I felt like a hypocrite for not doing the same thing with the rest of the team." Robert continued to Visi. "So yeah, I came clean to them about being Mecha Man shortly before you got here."

"How did you guys know?" Malevola asked.

"Found it out by accident a while back, sneaking around." Visi explained.

"Makes sense." Malevola nodded. "Have you guys been doing okay since you got cut?"

"We're fine. I'm… doing a lot better than I expected to be right now, actually." Visi reassured the team.

"Ooo, does that mean you two have finally stopped 'takin it slow'?" Prism snarked, and then laughed out loud at Visi's blush.

"A-ha, finally! Can we finally get an answer to our question now?" Malevola grinned wickedly. "How good is he?"

"If I told you bitches half of what we've gotten up to you'd both die of jealousy, so clearly my continued silence is only for your own good." Visi smirked back.

The entire table burst out laughing at that. Flambae gave Cap a cheerful thumbs-up, to which he responded with an urbane shrug.

"The important question is, how are you guys doing?" Cap redirected the conversation.

"It sucks." Golem rumbled. "Work sucks, the new rules suck, everything sucks."

"About the only thing that's going to get me to come into work tomorrow is the eventual anticipation of watching you legally burn SDN at least halfway to the ground." Sonar said.

"Yeah, Sonar explained that to us. Congratulations on winning the lottery, Visi! Don't forget your old friends once you cash in, hey?" Punch Up grinned.

"We don't even have time for that right now, honestly." Cap said. "Employed or not, Shroud still needs taking down, and we both still owe that guy a good pounding."

"Hrmph!" Flambae snorted. "At this point in time, who gives a shit? If SDN cares so little, why should we? The only reason we still stick with this bullshit is to avoid jail, but they are getting the absolute minimum from now on and not an inch more."

"Yeah, I mean look at what they did to Visi." Prism spat. "She turned her everything around just like the company claimed they wanted everybody in the program to do, and did it better than anyone… and how did she get thanked? By bein' dumped on even more stupidly than what they did to Coupe!"

"By now the pattern in the memos is pretty obvious." Sonar agreed. "SDN corporate is out to sabotage the Z-Team as hard as they can. If we'll get screwed no matter how many hoops we jump through, then why jump? Obviously they'll never believe we can change."

"Guys, I've told you. It doesn't matter what they believe, you know they're wrong about you. I know they're wrong about you." Robert insisted.

"That's not the point, Robert." Malevola said disgruntledly. "We know that you – and even Blazer – want to have our backs. The problem is that that's not worth anything anymore. You both did your best and you couldn't even slow this corporate crap down. Not for Coupe, not for Visi, and not for us."

"They just won't have any faith in the Z-Team, no matter what we do." Punch Up agreed vehemently. "So fuck 'em all."

"You're wrong." Cap shook his head. "The entire problem is that they do believe you might pull it off. That's exactly why they're doing this."

"The hell kind of crazy talk you talkin'?" Prism said incredulously.

"Back during the war, the B-17 pilots had a saying – 'If you're taking flak, then you're over the target.'" Cap quoted. "If SDN corporate really believed that your failure was inevitable, then the only thing they'd need to be doing to you right now is nothing." The Z-Team began to straighten up slowly as Cap's message began to sink in. "You only need to make an active effort to sabotage someone if you're afraid that they'll succeed. I don't know why the corporate HQ wants the Phoenix Program to fail, or why they're trying so hard to make it fail. But I do know that the harder they have to try to stop you from succeeding, the more that just underlines that you guys have been. Visi's not the only one here who's been turning their life around, or who maybe hasn't realized just how far they've already come. But if you can't take assurance of that from your friends, then take it from your opposition – and how desperate they are to try and stop you now."

"Cap's right. You can't just give up and coast, guys." Robert chimed in. "That's exactly what they want you to do, so you've got to dig in and spite those bastards."

"Dig in for what?" Flambae said. "Seriously, outside of keeping us from going to jail, what does keeping our bullshit jobs actually accomplish?"

"We're talking about stopping Shroud." Visi answered. "SDN is ignoring him but he's definitely not going to be ignoring us. Or the city. The cops can't stop him, the A-Teams aren't even trying to stop him, and that means it's all down to people like us."

"Not that we aren't going to try and talk to some honest law enforcement as well, if we can find any." Cap said. "But the entire plus side of us two being fired is that we don't have to play by SDN's rules anymore. As long as we don't actually get ourselves arrested, we can do whatever we need to do to try and find Shroud's operation."

"The city lost one indie hero recently." Robert said knowingly. "So why shouldn't it get two more?"

"But the two of you cannot defeat all of Shroud's people on your own." Flambae said knowingly. "So when you find them, you will still need backup."

"Backup like a team of superheroes who might not mind going a little rogue when the time comes." Cap agreed. "But where could we possibly find people like that?"

"And this time we'll look inside the truck first. Promise." Visi admitted shamefully.

"That wasn't even your fault, really." Flambae denied. "But now that you remind me, I certainly still owe Shroud something for trying to blow me up!"

"You're a clever man, Captain, and Visi's a sneaky lass and a half, but what makes you think you can find him?" Punch Up asked.

"And that brings me to the good news part of this conversation.. . and also the part you all have to be very careful to keep secret, or else it might get someone killed." Cap said. "I honestly debated not telling you, but even if it's not the most logical thing to do right now you still all have the right to know." He looked at Punch Up. "Coupe said to tell you that she's sorry she was such a fool."

"You found her?" Punch Up did a heroic spit-take.

"We did." Visi said. "And we convinced her of how Shroud played her – it was just like you suspected, he was deliberately blocking out her ability to communicate with us. She's… not entirely out of danger yet, but so far Shroud hasn't figured out that she's been talking to us on the side. And she's entirely on board with helping us take the bastard down."

"We don't intend to leave her out there for very long, but we've got to arrange some kind of legal escape for her first." Cap assured them. "That's one of the other things we're trying to work on."

"As are Blazer and myself." Robert assured them.

"Uh, I g-got the tacos." Waterboy interrupted them, carrying an overloaded tray. Cap immediately got up and helped him start distributing the food.

"Here, let me chip in." Cap said, laying a hundred-dollar bill on the tray.

"How is the unemployed guy more flush than we are?" Punch Up wondered.

"Modest spending habits?" Visi joked.

* * * * *

"Coupe." Shroud addressed the winged ex-assassin tonelessly, as Toxic stood loyally by his side.

"Sir." she nodded to him briefly, masking her nervousness. They were meeting in an unused storefront, one of the several locations that Shroud irregularly rotated between for meetings with people who weren't trusted enough yet to know where his headquarters was.

"Captain America." Shroud stated, and only a lifetime of rigorous training kept Coupe's expression from changing. "You have already recounted the origin story that he provided you to me, but what else do you know about him?"

"I… am not sure I understand the question." Coupe replied slowly. "I only worked with him briefly before they fired me." She deliberately let the bitter resentment she still felt over SDN's corporate stupidity fill her voice at that one. "And we did not share any assignments during that time."

"What the fuck is up between him and Invisigal?" Toxic broke in.

"That was by all appearances sincere." Coupe gratefully seized on the subject change. "Invisigal is not at all a subtle person. While I still found her change in demeanor to be inexplicable, I never doubted that it was genuine. She simply isn't that good an actress."

"Such was my experience with her as well." Shroud agreed. "You weren't aware that she used to work for me?"

"Actually I was." Coupe replied tautly, remembering the advice she'd received to never try lying directly to Shroud. "She… hardly made a public announcement of it, but I had occasion to glimpse her augmentations once while she was partially undressed. And after I started working here, I could of course recognize the significance of what I had seen."

"At any point during your mutual tenure on the Z-Team, did the Captain seem to be engaged in any… intelligence-gathering activities? Was he attempting to ingratiate himself with the team? Learn more about you?" Shroud pressed.

"At first it was like he didn't even want to work with us." Coupe denied. "He couldn't get out of the first team meeting he'd attended quickly enough. He began to become… more approachable… relatively quickly, but with one exception he didn't attempt to be more than a reasonable co-worker with any of us during my tenure."

"So you saw nothing that would indicate he had been assigned here." Shroud questioned. "Or that he was keeping in touch with any… old contacts."

"No." Coupe shook her head.

Shroud stood staring silently at her for a long moment. "Report to Morphus and join his team for tonight's operation. You already know the location."

"Yes sir." Coupe nodded again and departed.

"So, what now?" Toxic asked after Coupe had left.

"She does not trust me and her loyalty is still only dictated by fear and pragmatism… but that was already a known factor." Shroud replied tonelessly. "Recruitment by deception always carries an element of risk, but if kept bereft of any of her emotional anchors then soon enough she should resume the pattern of the only life she has ever known – to trade performance of her skills in return for security and remuneration. And in her case the risk was worth it for the opportunity for further intelligence-gathering on the Z-Team, as well as the utility an operative of her caliber would provide should her loyalty eventually be secured after all. As for the more immediate question… the divergence in result from the original plan is at present minor, but still concerning."

"Yeah." Toxic nodded. "Blowing the truck bomb put the Z-Team on the back foot and locked them up in a corporate holding pattern just like we wanted, but wasn't Visi supposed to be back in jail and the Captain sent off to Hollywood by this point?"

"That was the calculated result of the incident encouraging SDN's corporate headquarters to do a detailed review of the personnel files of those involved, but not the actual result." Shroud agreed. "As is, they are both now free agents… and thus, potential rogue factors."

"Well if it helps any, they might have just blown outta town." Toxic replied. "I swung by Visi's place late last night just to see what was going on there, and she'd grabbed her stuff and split. That got me curious enough to swing by his place to see if she was shacking up there now, but turns out he'd moved out too. So if they've decided their reaction to SDN's screwjob is to just say 'fuck it' and pull up stakes, then fine by us. If they're not here, they're not in our way."

"That would be ideal." Shroud agreed. "But of course we would need confirmation of that fact before relying on it."

"I'll put the word out and see what info we can gather." Toxic acknowledged. "Any other changes to the program I need to make?"

"Not at present. Despite minor deviations, the plan proceeds apace."

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 46

Courtney leaned over in bed and kissed her boyfriend good morning. "We gotta find a more permanent living solution than a new motel every night."

"At least motel clerks don't ask questions as to why two young and good-looking people are checking in for one night only and paying in cash." Steve replied amiably.

"I wonder if they think we're just passing through, or if I'm your side business and you've actually got a wife and two-point-four kids somewhere?" Courtney joked as they got up and dressed.

Steve's cell phone ringing provided a useful distraction from Courtney's last statement. "Rogers… Mandy, how have you been? Really? That's very useful, thank you. Sure, we'll be there." He closed his phone and stood up. "She's got us the meeting with the Feds, nine-thirty downtown. We'll make it if we hurry, but we'll have to grab us something on the way."

"Walking right into the Federal building." Courtney whistled nervously. "Let's hope it doesn't turn into a roach motel situation.

"It wasn't the address for the Federal building." Steve shook his head. "As for the rest, we'll find out where we get there."

LA morning traffic was its usual horrible self, but fortunately generous travel time had been allowed for the meeting. The address provided turned out to be that of a small nondescript three-story building tucked in-between two office buildings in an unremarkable part of the LA business district.

"The heck kind of place is this to be meeting with the Feds?" Courtney looked up at the building confusedly. "There's barely even a street number on it, let alone a sign."

"It's got 'safe house' written all over it." Steve smiled with satisfaction. "That's a good sign. It means they're taking this meeting seriously."

"Good morning." The polite young doorman greeted them inside the cramped lobby from a behind what Steve's eye picked out was a bulletproof glass booth doing its best to not look like bulletproof glass. "Do you have an appointment?"

"Rogers and Doe, nine-thirty." Steve answered, and after looking at both their driver's licenses the athletic young man nodded.

"Please wait here, I'll call them." The agent dialed a number on his extension and spoke briefly, and after a short wait the interior door was buzzed open to reveal a large, athletic middle-aged black man dressed in a neatly pressed office shirt and slacks. His badge was clearly visible hanging around his neck from a lanyard and with his jacket off, his holstered sidearm was also in plain sight.

"Assistant Special Agent in Charge Nick Washington, FBI." The man greeted them, and held out his credentials for both of them to examine. "Follow me."

He led them down the hallway to a stairwell and down to an interview room in the basement, already occupied by a younger agent sitting at a table with a lined pad and several pens. One wall of the room was composed of one-way glass from waist-height upwards. Courtney drew a deep breath at the sight of the younger man.

"Okay, we can start." ASAC Washington said as he gestured for everyone to take their seats. He announced the time, date, and place, and then continued. "With us today are Steven Rogers and Courtney Jane Doe, and the subject of this interview is domestic terrorist activity. I am ASAC Nick Washington and with me is also-"

"Senior Special Agent Tom Sullivan." He stated.

"-both of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office." Washington continued. "First off, do all parties consent to this interview being recorded? Please state your name and your assent verbally for the record."

Steve and Courtney did so, to be followed by the two agents.

"All right. Mr. Rogers, Blonde Blazer communicated to me yesterday that you two had information regarding the Devon Foods truck bombing-" ASAC Washington began.

For the next forty-five minutes the two heroes swiftly yet thoroughly walked the two FBI agents through everything they had learned and suspected, and then the two agents asked a round of penetrating questions. Steve also handed over the cell phone they'd taken from Psyche-Out and the written notes they and Coupe had both made.

"All right, recorder off." Nick said, and then wearily rubbed his eyes and both agents got up to walk over to the coffee pot. "How do you take yours?"

"Black." Steve said. "None for me, thanks." Courtney contributed.

They brought the mugs back to the interview table and Nick pushed one of them across to Steve before the agents started to drink from their own.

"Ugh, what a mess." SSA Sullivan said.

"Hopefully it's a believable mess." Steve replied mildly.

"The part about you actually having been in the business certainly is, Captain." ASAC Washington nodded, holding up one of the neatly written sheets Steve had provided. "The way you formatted and organized this reads just like everything else we get from DIA or JSOC, and it's entirely different from how Ms. Doe or Ms. Weaver wrote theirs. Clearly you've shared at least some of the same training as we have."

"Is there enough jurisdiction here for the FBI to come in?" Steve pressed.

"By itself, borderline, because neither Torrance PD nor LA County has actually requested our assistance on the Devon Foods bombing – despite our having heavily hinted that we'd love it if they did. So officially that's not a federal case yet." Washington answered. "However, I entirely agree with your theory that it forms a pattern with the oil refinery fire, and the instant there's a pattern it's unambiguously a domestic terrorism investigation."

"What's your theory on why they set the fire?" Sullivan asked. "Because while I agree that the M.O. of the sabotage matches in hindsight, be damned if I can see any motive."

"At the time I thought it might possibly be a one-two attack, like the insurgents in the Middle East liked to do. Use the first IED to lure out a reaction force, then ambush our troops while they're deploying to respond to it." Steve replied. "But nothing happened, so it's possible my having put scouts out against flank attack made them abort."

"Reasonable." Washington said. "But it could also have been a reconaissance. Do a test attack, then measure response times and study opposing force doctrine. There were any number of rubberneckers with cameras."

"Also possible." Steve agreed. "Shroud's clearly a chessmaster type, and like I was saying the other day, it's kinda hard to play chess if you don't know where all the pieces are and what patterns they move in."

"We certainly know he's patient and methodical." Sullivan agreed. "Are you familiar with the circumstances of his prison escape?"

"Only in outline." Steve acknowledged. "Took him almost fifteen years to set up, didn't it?"

"More accurately, it took him twelve years of good behavior to earn trustee status, and two more of incident-free trustee status after that before he was able to cut a deal to trade his scientific genius in return for helping develop medical prosthetics, as volunteer medical research on prisoners." Washington summarized. "A few months of showing promising results in the medical trials – under strict supervision – and only then does he finally go for it, along with the accomplice he recruited in prison."

"So your chessmaster analogy certainly fits. Slow and patient build-up in the early and middle game, then the endgame is him suddenly going on the attack and capturing pieces like crazy. Speedblitz to checkmate." Sullivan nodded.

"All the more reason we need to stop him while he's still in his build-up phase." Courtney finally contributed. "He's bad enough now, he's gonna be fucking terrifying if people keep sitting on their hands."

"Okay, before we go any further I've got to address one thing for my own curiosity." Sullivan looked at Courtney. "I arrested you a few years ago-"

"I remember." Courtney said embarrassedly.

"But if I hadn't reviewed your most recent file entries last night, I wouldn't even have recognized you today." Sullivan continued confusedly. "I always thought that SDN's Phoenix Program was - to put it charitably - not very well organized, but it's actually delivering results like this?"

"You actually got caught?" Steve teased Courtney.

"It was an industrial espionage case." Sullivan explained. "Her client was the big fish, she was just little fish. So we offered immunity."

"The person who needs immunity right now is Janelle." Steve pressed. "And relatively quickly, because if she doesn't come in soon it's entirely possible she'll end up killed."

"Yeah." Washington agreed soberly. "Every amateur thinks that undercover work is as simple as not telling the truth when you join up, and of course it doesn't work that way. You try infiltrating even a teenaged gang without lots of specialized training first, let alone a major criminal conspiracy, and it is very likely you'll be blown. It's not as if those types of places wait for things like 'a preponderance of the evidence' or 'beyond a reasonable doubt' before acting on suspicion."

"We'll be talking to the US Attorney later today and stressing the urgency." Sullivan said. "But even if we can't get immunity right off the bat, we can certainly at least get protective custody. So tell her that if she even thinks they're getting close then she needs to bail immediately and not to worry about her landing place. We'll give her full wit-sec in the interim."

"We'll probably be able to get it, though. Her contributions so far already look useful, and given the size of the detonations Shroud's already been willing to use just as set-ups to something else, my boss is 99 to 1 going to sign off on not just waiting around to see just how big a blow-out that lunatic intends for his grand finale." ASAC Washington.

"What's our next move?" Steve asked.

"First step, this phone you obtained for us is an intel gold mine." Washington smiled. "Even if they're using burners and even if they change it out soon, the contacts list still gives us all the phone numbers that Shroud's lieutenants have been using this week. Even before we discuss Janelle's immunity I am getting warrants to wiretap every single one of those numbers and start running the call records back to Original Sin."

"Just to confirm, you did find this lying outside of the Sardine, right?" SSA Sullivan asked, grinning.

"I saw Psyche-Out drop it on the sidewalk plain as day." Courtney smirked, as she wiggled her fingers in the classic 'pickpocketing' gesture.

"So let the record show." ASAC Washington also grinned. "Also, we need to get you two off the streets. We'll set up a discreet apartment through witness protection, that should cover you for the immediate duration."

"If possible, we'd like one closer to Torrance than downtown." Steve replied.

"Officially, we cannot condone any vigilante action." ASAC Washington said soberly. "Unofficially, LA's had nowhere near enough independent heroes recently. Mecha Man was really the last one, and working with most corporate-sponsored ones is-" he trailed off diplomatically.

"A mixed experience." Sullivan nodded.

"So I've been learning." Steve nodded. "But at least there's a few we can still trust."

"I still can't get my head around how right now the only definitely uncompromised assets available at SDN are the Z-Team." Sullivan eye-rolled. "Seriously, their criminal records and psych evals make hers look tame and no offense, ma'am, but yours were really not great."

"Well, you're not lying." Courtney admitted sheepishly.

"I had to work with them and help train them." Steve acknowledged. "Even more than your files are telling you, I know that they can be erratic and often undisciplined. But I also believe that with the right push they can be exactly what we need."

"And you certainly can't have any doubts about Blazer." Courtney contributed.

"Certainly not, considering she's the one whose recommendation got you in the door here." Washington acknowledged. "We threw ourselves a little pity party around the field office when SDN promoted her to the Torrance branch, because having her downtown made our lives so much easier when working cooperation cases. I just wish the rest of them had the same attitude."

"Well, either way we've got a lot to do." Steve acknowledged.

"That we do." Washington stood up and the others followed him. After a brief round of shaking hands, he called the agent at the front desk to escort the two heroes out and introduce them to the agent who'd be setting up their new arrangements.

"So." Washington turned to Sullivan as soon as the door had closed behind them. "You're the one who's actually worked with her before. You smell anything off-color?"

"Surprisingly, no." Sullivan agreed. "Last time getting any useful testimony out of her was like pulling teeth, and that even with her cooperation being the only thing keeping her out of jail at the time. Today it was like I was dealing with the good twin from a mirror dimension!"

"Did you spot anything else?" Washington smiled.

"You mean the way they were practically holding hands?" Sullivan chuckled. "Or the way his body language momentarily went from 'Sir yes sir' to 'Touch the lady and I will drop you both' the instant it even looked like I might be getting out the cuffs?"

"Well, it's not as if Blazer hadn't forewarned us." Washington acknowledged. "But yeah, I agree, they seem genuine."

"You think we can get the US Attorney to sign off on making it our jurisdiction?" Sullivan asked.

"Enough to put the field office onto following up every lead we currently have? Certainly. Enough to call in a whole task force?" He shook his head. "Not unless we turn up something else substantial."

"Or until Shroud blows up something even worse." Sullivan agreed ruefully.

* * * * *

Author's Note: Still not quite finished detailing the actual counter-terrorist plot whys and wherefores, but at least I can advance it a step further while I work and you wait.

Yes, the barfight and the reveal happened off-stage. Running parallel tracks and having only one of them with camera POV is such a useful labor-saving device for an already busy author. *g*

Shroud manages to miss Janelle is a double agent so far, because so far he's still only seeing what he already expected to see. Ironically, his cynicism is what kept him from making the spot immediately. Still, she's definitely not having it easy.

And yay, people are here from the government and they want to help! (Surprisingly enough.)

Readers of my old and obscure shit might recognize one of the NPCs in this chapter, and they are correct. Special Agent Nick Washington is indeed me reusing a fave OC from my old Jumpchain fanfic, 'Five Seasons Is All You Get'. Obviously this isn't the same continuity or even the same omniverse as that, but he is a timeline counterpart.

Yes, Nick's rant about 'amateurs and undercover' is indeed the author taking shots at the unwisdom displayed by a certain insect-controlling parahuman in a certain coastal city during a certain early plot arc in a certain popular web series. If I pretended otherwise, I'd be lying.

And yes, Steve was indeed deliberately quoting what Fury had said to the World Security Council about the Avengers. *g*

The circumstances of Shroud's prison escape are a blank in canon, so yet again the USS Make Shit Up fills in here.

I had fun with Courtney being 'TFW when you come in to get help from the Feds and you realize one of the interviewing agents is the same guy who busted you last time'.

cliffc999 · Wednesday at 9:14 PM

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 46

Despite their hopes Cap and Visi spent the most of the rest of the day continuing to debrief themselves to the FBI in further detail, both together and in separate interviews. SSA Sullivan and several specialists of the LA Field Office did the follow-ups while ASAC Washington was busy organizing the investigative efforts being sent into motion based on the heroes' initial report as well as informing his chain of command.

And late in the afternoon, the beleaguered deputy was called into his boss' office for the third time that day.

"Washington." Special Agent in Charge Anna Davis, head of the FBI Los Angeles Field Office, looked up at him from her messy desk. "I just got out of the longest teleconference I have ever had with DC in my entire career, and that after having spent a good chunk of time at the US Attorney's, so I'm out of the loop for anything in the past several hours. Any new emergencies?"

"No ma'am." Nick nodded at her.

"Good." She breathed out in relief. "All right, first up, did the court agree with fast-tracking those electronic surveillance warrants and has anything else significant broken loose in the case?"

"The court did agree, and we put in the spikes at the cell service provider shortly after one PM." Nick reported. "We've also been tapping new numbers as they call in to the numbers we already have warrants for, as soon as we can prove that the new phone belongs to someone already on our suspects list. Most importantly, Psyche-Out has a new phone so they're aware that her old one's been lost, but they still haven't started changing out their phones for new burners. So apparently they're not paranoid enough to think that her old phone's fallen into unfriendly hands and are just accepting that she must have misplaced it while out drinking."

"Stroke of luck." Davis agreed. "The taps getting anything?"

"Confirmation of their involvement in several suspected robberies and gangland clashes over the recent past, but nothing hot." Washington reported. "The preliminary traffic analysis confirms several things, though. One, Shroud is running his operation on a loose cell system. Everybody mostly knows who everybody else is, but they're still divided up into ad hoc operational sub-compartments and every working team only knows about what they're doing, not anybody else. Two, Shroud himself isn't on the phone net. All communications run through Toxic as his deputy commander. And three, he's physically disabled the GPS locator hardware on the phones they're using so we can't track on them that way."

"Coupe?" Davis asked.

"Her phone as well. Although the emergency burner Cap gave her does have a lost-phone tracker, despite being a brick of a flip phone otherwise, so if she ever turns it on we can at least track that. Right now she's keeping it dark."

"Any progress on the legwork?" Davis asked. "And if we backburner every other non-emergency case in the office, how many bodies can we get for this?"

"I actually haven't started flooding the street yet because doing that alerts Shroud that he's now a federal case, and that's a strategic decision I wasn't going to make without speaking to you about it. So while we have some people out knocking on doors, so far it's only at a routine-appearing level." Washington said. "That having been said, I've pulled around forty people off other cases already and set up a war room just for this. Right now they're all on their computer terminals and phones doing everything else that can be discreetly done. If we backburnered the rest of our non-emergency cases and made this one a sole focus, push that up to maybe a hundred people."

"Oh, this case is hands down our top focus right now." Davis nodded. "The US Attorney and DC Field Office both concur that Shroud is now a major domestic terror threat and DoJ has officially signed off on treating him as such. It's not just the Devon Foods bombing and the refinery fire, but also the jailbreak – particularly the hostage gambit the man pulled with imploding a hospital building just to force Blonde Blazer to break off pursuit."

"That's one of the parts I just can't figure. Shroud's clearly trying to stay low profile while he finishes his setup, so why the hell did he do multiple events in rapid succession practically begging us to step in? Is his influence over local law enforcement and SDN so great that he was that confident we'd never be called?" Washington puzzled.

SAC Davis chuckled. "I was wondering the same thing, until DoJ pointed out something that I'd overlooked. Most of the relevant statutes that are allowing us to come in on a domestic terror case like this are less than fifteen years old. Shroud apparently didn't stop to give himself a refresher course on managing his legal risks before resuming his criminal career."

"Hah!" Washington laughed. "Oh, that is the funniest shit I've heard today!" He steadied his breath and continued. "Speaking of, what decisions have been made above our pay grade about this?"

"First off, Shroud is officially the highest-priority domestic terrorism case in the history of the Bureau since the Oklahoma City bombing." SAC Davis stated flatly. "DC absolutely does not like the thought of other would-be little masterminds deciding that Shroud's style of escalation is now the new normal, and so they want this squashed before it catches on. We need to bag him and make an example out of him in front of a federal judge. The whole three-ring circus, with hard time in ADX Florence at the end of it."

"And second off?" Washington asked knowingly, more than familiar enough with his boss' mannerisms to pick up that the bad news was coming in right after the good news.

"And second off, Shroud's not the only problem we're having right now." Davis acknowledged ruefully. "Something has clearly gone significantly rotten with the SDN system in the LA area without our noticing until now, and they're just praying that it isn't something endemic to the privatized hero system in general. Rogers' preliminary evaluation that we'll have to treat everybody at SDN as potentially compromised until and unless we're assured of their reliability as individuals is something they – and I - concur with. And that means, among other things, that we have to devote at least as many resources to doing a full counter-intelligence and anti-corruption probe into SDN corporate as we are devoting to Shroud. And we have to do those both concurrently."

"Wouldn't it be nice if we could only have one major case to work at a time, just like in the movies?" Washington said ruefully. "So how are we splitting the workload?"

"The Shroud half of the equation is all yours." Davis agreed. "ASAC Jenkins gets the SDN probe. You both set up parallel task forces and each concentrate on your own primary area, and cross-coordinate as needed – you're both big boys, I don't need to hold your hands there. But when you split up the available manpower, factor in that we're getting seventy more field agents to augment the Shroud task force for the duration. DC's peeling them out from other field offices right now, they should start arriving tomorrow. Tell Williamson to start working on the logistics of getting them all per diem, hotel rooms, working space set up for them in the building, the usual."

A pair of sharp knocks rapped smartly on the doorframe. "You wanted to see me, ma'am?" SSA Sullivan greeted her from the open office doorway.

"Good, you're here." Davis said as the man entered her office. "Anything significant to the case from the follow-up interviews?"

"Several items of interest that will be in the report, but nothing of immediate necessity." Sullivan stated.

"Right. Now for why I really called you here. What's the personnel evaluation on our two principals?" Davis said.

"Starting with Invisigal…" Sullivan placed one of the several file folders he was carrying on Davis' desk. "The preliminary evaluation is that we blew the evaluation last time. Our behavorial science guy's best guess right now is that she wasn't borderline personality disorder after all, she just did a very good job of presenting that way – even to herself. The actual problem appears to have been… okay, the formal psych write-up is in there, the layman's summary is that after a lifetime of basically everyone telling her that she was nothing but worthless shit and 'born evil', she believed them. Right down to childhood anti-metahuman persecution."

"Damn." Washington swore. "You barely even see that anymore. It sounds like some crap straight out of the 70s."

"It was." Sullivan nodded gravely. "Seriously, after she finally managed to get it out I wanted to go punch a wall over how she'd been treated and I'm the agent who wrote the recommendation against granting her immunity the last time."

"If she's in that kind of headspace, then that doesn't sound like her current relationship is on a healthy footing." Davis said worriedly.

"If it were with someone else, it could easily not be." Sullivan agreed. "Which brings me to Captain Rogers' evaluation."

"Ah yes, our dimensional refugee. You believe his backstory then?" Davis asked.

"Ma'am, his evaluation was so startling that I would not believe that man even exists if I hadn't physically shaken his hand and spoken to him." Sullivan answered flatly. "Now granted that his results have to take into account that he readily spotted that some of the 'follow-up interviews' were actually a psychiatric evaluation – which she hadn't spotted – but then he willingly cooperated with the evaluation anyway. Anyway, his write-up's in here, and I very much recommend a detailed read of it, but the short version is that this guy is the single toughest and most mentally-focused SOB I have ever met in my life. And we really do not want to fuck around with him needlessly. There is a switch in that man's head that can go from 'peace' to 'war' in zero seconds and he has absolute control of that switch. It's the same sort of mentality that our HRT shooters have, only perhaps at an even higher intensity level. So his backstory of having been a Tier One special warfare operator in his home timeline's versions of both the OSS and then CIA Special Activities? We need to believe it. In fact, for safety's sake we should assume he's understating it." Breathing out heavily, he continued. "That having been said, by all indicators his training wasn't for deception ops but instead for the more straightforward end of the equation, so we don't have much worry we're being played here. Judging from his comments when his old agency needed subtle shit done they made sure to partner him with a more subtle operative. His job was batting clean-up."

"How does a man like that end up partnering with a girl like Invisigal, particularly in this situation?" Washington asked confusedly.

"Because his being that hardcore was not a natural trait, but a learned reaction to having been up against actual World War II Nazis and their full atrocity parade." Sullivan replied. "He's a one-man army if he feels it necessary, but the preliminary eval is that he only escalates that high in reaction to either extreme threat or extreme provocation. Left to his own devices he doesn't much want to hurt people at all. Witness his performance history at SDN."

"And him and her?" Davis asked. "Not that the more personal element is really any of my business, but if there's about to be a psychological trainwreck happening then I'd hate for the Bureau to have had any part in enabling it."

"He's aware that she could potentially be very emotionally vulnerable to him if he took advantage… but he's deliberately avoiding that. And he has at least a basic awareness of the psychology involved, which is enough to not to fuck it up." Sullivan said. "And while she's definitely vulnerable, lots of people are vulnerable one way or another. She's still not actually dysfunctional. As for why they're together at all, it seems to be a combination between two people both of whom were very starved for human connection each for separate reasons happening to meet at just the right moment, and a genuinely deep underlying compatibility. But again, that's just from initial interviews. You want anything firmer than that, you'd need to get both of them into a therapy cycle and a prolonged evaluation."

"Speaking of which?" Davis probed.

"Behavioral Science says he could probably use some outpatient PTSD counseling and decompression – the guy's been on continuous active duty op-tempo for like four years before coming here, half of that time in World War II of all places. But he's already aware of that fact, and was in fact getting that counseling prior to his wormhole journey." Sullivan reported. "She could use some counseling as well for her own trauma, but again it's at the 'outpatient only' level and it's nowhere near the threshold that would require an immediate intervention. Practically speaking, if you wanted to put them back out there on the street for this then there are no indicators that they're not stable enough for that."

"Last but certainly not least." Davis smiled slightly. "Recruitment possibilities?"

"'Softly, softly, catchee monkey'." Sullivan quoted the proverb. "They're fresh off having been burned by their employer and they both had emotional roller-coaster lives before that, so at present they're not in a joining mood for anything. If we make an offer, it should only be after the successful resolution of this case and after we've all had a big victory party together and become trusted friends. And remember that Captain Rogers had already turned down the military's recruitment offer when he was initially being resettled."

"I saw that offer in his file." Washington said. "They weren't offering much – which to be fair, he was a complete blind bag pick at the time – and their recruiting officer really wasn't being very diplomatic. Not surprising he bounced it."

"And factor in that while he's absolutely capable of it – and by all accounts very skilled at it - he doesn't particularly enjoy killing people as first option." Sullivan agreed. "Joining the Army in the first place was because of the Nazis, and this SHIELD outfit he was with largely seemed to be a case of 'not having many other options coming out of the ice'. Arriving here, on our world, is maybe the first time he's had to make an unpressured choice about what to do with his life since he graduated high school and he's not going to waste that opportunity. So if you want him for the Bureau we're going to need to go slow and subtle."

"Oh, if he's half as impressive as you've described then I absolutely want him for the Bureau." Davis smiled sharply. "And if her personnel evaluation cleans up as nicely as you've implied it will, she could be a good prospect as well. But you're right in that's a long-term concern. For right now, we have a case to solve."

* * * * *

Lab robbery. Vanderstenk Inc.. Target is experimental mutagenics serum. Tonight. Is Punch Up still being an idiot?

The emergency text from Coupe glared damningly from Cap's burner phone.

"Shit." ASAC Washington said from where they were sitting in the safe house's conference room. "We're still working on getting her a safe place to land, and we're already risking compromising her."

"We're talking about a group of terrorists getting their hands on something that can be easily repurposed as a biological weapon." Cap said insistently. "That is simply not a situation where you can hang back and take a pass, regardless of political or operational risks."

"I'm not disagreeing. I just don't see how to finesse using this so that we don't blow our source." Nick shook his head.

"Vanderstenk has a platinum SDN subscription." Visi interjected. "Some of our most annoying bullshit calls came from that account. If his lab's silent alarm goes off, SDN will roll on it immediately."

"You're not saying that we should leave it up to them." Sullivan said incredulously.

"No." Visi said. "But I am saying that our friends still work there… including one of the dispatchers." She smiled.

Cap snapped his fingers in realization. "You're saying we both deploy to the lab robbery, not the Bureau. And that we cover our being there by making it look like Robert tipped us off under the table."

"Which leaves Shroud aware that you're both in the field and still acting against him…" Nick also snapped his fingers in realization. "But he'll think you're lone-wolfing it as indie heroes, which means he won't think that you came to us first. Split the difference between covering the critical case but not tipping our hand."

"I've heard worse improvisations, particularly when on this short a notice." Sullivan agreed. "But how can we guarantee that SDN's network will pick up the intrusion?"

"Well since we know where, we can just sit on the target all night." Cap said. "And as soon as Shroud's people show up I text Robert, who then makes sure to get an 'alarm indicator' from the lab whether there actually is one or not."

"All right." Nick decided. "Head up there right now. I'll make the calls."

Several hours later Cap and Visi saw Coupe swoop by overhead from where they were hidden near the lab complex, as the winged woman scouted out the block surrounding the laboratory complex. Outside of having one simple acknowledgement of receiving her text they had not made any further attempt to communicate her or reveal themselves to her right now. What Coupe didn't know, Shroud hopefully couldn't detect her lying about.

They're here. It's about to happen. Cap texted to Robert's private phone.

I'm in the lab's security systems. Let me know when to start the noise. Robert texted back.

A nondescript van pulled up to the back gate of the lab and three costumed people got out. Their leader was a man carrying two red glowing energy khopeshes and wearing a skull mask. The other two were a large skinheaded man with giant outsized mechanical arms grafted to his shoulders above his real ones and a woman with several green glowing energy constructs protruding from her back in the shape of spider legs.

"Armstrong, get the gate." Khopesh ordered, and the skinheaded cyborg tore the steel security gate loose from the ground and tossed it aside.

Well, that made it easy for me. Alarm sounded, trouble call out. Malevola ETA five minutes. Robert texted.

We'll give it three, then go and interrupt them. Cap texted back. The villains marched openly across the parking lot and Coupe swooped down out of the sky to join them, and the squad entered the lab building.

"And… go." Cap said, and him and Visi started their car and, driving as if they'd just come a long way to get here, pulled out of their surveillance spot and up to the gates of the lab. Cap paused briefly to pop two of the tires on the getaway van with the edge of his shield before they entered the lab building.

"Armstrong and Spiderlegs are outside, meaning the leader and Coupe are inside." Cap whispered to Visi as they peered down the hallway outside the secure bio-lab. "I'll take them both out there, you slip past and go for the one in the lab. If we can clean sweep here-"

"Right." Visi nodded.

Cap's shield toss took the unaware Spiderlegs directly in the head, knocking her cold. The shield rebounded and flew back into Cap's hand as he charged Armstrong, just in time to let him block the cyborg's furious hammerblow. Armstrong's outsized arms gave him several feet of reach advantage over the Captain, so denied an immediate opportunity to strike a counterpunch Cap fell back and settled on a defensive strategy as the blind berserker hammered at him again and again.

The invisible woman slipped right through the doorway that Armstrong had just vacated and entered the bio-lab proper. Coupe was maintaining a watch on the doorway while Khopesh was busy attacking some type of cracking device to the sealed containment array that held the serum.

"What the hell is going on out there?" Khopesh called angrily.

"It's the shield guy!" Armstrong said. "Don't worry, I got him!"

"Wait, Captain America?" Khopesh straightened up immediately and looked around warily, and Visi immediately aborted her approach to crouch down behind a nearby lab bench. Materializing briefly, she caught her breath and went invisible again. "But that means-" He turned and immediately slammed a button on the nearby control panel, activating the lab's fire suppression system.

Torrents of water drenched down from the sprinklers, immediately voiding Visi's invisibility. "There you are!" Khopesh snarled, sending scythes of cutting energy her way with furious scythe-swings. Visi dived for cover as Khopesh's furious command rang out. "Coupe, take her!"

Coupe nodded in silent acknowledgement and threw a barrage of wing-knives, deliberately aiming them just wide enough to give Visi a chance to dodge again. Visi took advantage of the opportunity to vault directly over a lab bench and come directly at Coupe in a flying kick, a charging attack that Coupe readily stepped into and parried.

'Can you help me take him?' Visi whispered softly as the two women grappled and exchanged hand-to-hand blows.

'If I take the serum back, Shroud might trust me enough to let me know where his main base is.' Coupe whispered back as she 'subdued' Visi in a choke-hold.

'He can't leave here with it!' Visi whispered back as she 'elbowed her way free' and the two women resumed their martial circle.

'On three, then.' Coupe agreed as Visi and her deliberately moved their 'struggle' closer to Khopesh. 'Two… one-'

"Coupe!" Khopesh's shout broke in, as both women looked guiltily over at the villain… who was now triumphantly holding the serum bottle. "Leave her to me! Get this out of here!"

Khopesh leapt directly to the attack after tossing the serum vial through the air towards Coupe, and Visi was forced to fall back as the winged double agent reflexively snagged the vial out of the air. With a helpless glance at Visi, she turned to run out the door, furiously brainstorming how she could possibly 'lose' the vial without revealing herself-

-only to have the question answered for her as Captain America sent her sprawling with a legsweep from where he'd dropped down low outside the lab door after disabling Armstrong. Coupe was genuinely taken off guard and sent flying, but then smiled in realization at what had happened as she deliberately 'lost' the vial in her fall and slowly regained her feet to face off against the Captain.

"Okay, let's make it look good." Cap murmured to her as the two combatants squared off and began a showy martial arts battle. "Visi, status?" he shouted.

"Could be going better!" she called back from inside the lab where Khopesh furiously had her on the defensive. His lightsaber-like scythe-weapons made it impossible for her to close the gap on an alerted opponent, her invisibility was neutralized by the fire sprinklers, and Khopesh was a brutal and superhumanly strong close-combatant.

"Fall back on me! I need help with Coupe!" Cap called out, and then whispered to Coupe. 'Stab me in the stomach, I can walk it off.' And then he deliberately left himself open just enough-

Coupe nodded in sober acknowledgement and used the opening to ram one of her knives up to the hilt in Cap's abdomen, deliberately angling to miss the liver or spleen. Cap shouted in pain and went to his knees, and Visi shrieked in rage and leapt furiously to the attack.

"Back off!" Coupe ordered her, pretending to take the 'helpless' Captain hostage with another knife to his throat. Visi stopped in shock, only to relax slightly at Cap's wink.

"And to think we ever trusted you." Visi snarled bitterly at the heroine. "But I guess you're exactly where you want to be now, aren't you?"

"Just stall a little more…" Cap whispered to both of them.

"Seems as if." Coupe agreed grimly. "Khopesh, get out here and find the vial! I've got these two neutralized for the moment-"

A glowing red portal opened up and Malevola stepped out of it, then rapidly took in the tableau. "Coupe? What the hell-?"

"Drive her off." Visi mouthed silently at Malevola, and the half-demoness raised her two-handed sword and stepped forward to attack. Coupe snarled and threw Captain America at Visi, knocking them both down, and turned and fled for her life.

"Cap's wounded! Help me with him!" Visi called plaintively, and Malevola stopped. The furious Khopesh came out to see three heroes confronting him, half his team down, and Coupe having been sent into a retreat, and stepped back inside the lab and fled. The faint sound of him slicing his own exit open through the opposite wall came from inside the room.

"So, I guess we won?" Malevola joked as her and Visi helped the wounded Captain to his feet and then recovered the serum vial.

"For a certain definition of 'winning'." Cap joked back, and then groaned.

* * * * *

Author's Note: As we recall from Avengers 1 Cap got shot in the gut with a Chitauri blaster and then fought the rest of the battle without medical attention and was up and around a short time afterwards. So a knife to the gut, particularly one that deliberately missed all the vitals, is not going to hurt him much. It does certainly sell the fight, though.

And yes, the FBI is still doing FBI things. But hey, it is amusing to have the FBI from like a Tom Clancy novel meet a comic-book plot, even if accomodations will have to be made to make things fit. And the local field office is already starting to get reinforcements, even if it's still 'dozens of agents for a crash full-force investigation' as opposed to a significant combat deployment.

The lab robbery actually is a canon dispatch from the game, even if all the implications are not.

And yes, the 'you can't just ignore terrorists going for a biological agent regardless of how iffy the deployment might be' is indeed a deliberate reference to Captain America: Civil War. Seriously, just letting HYDRA goons walk off with a live smallpox culture was never a viable option, even if consequences happened the other way.

cliffc999 · Thursday at 12:22 PM

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 46

"I'm still mad at you." Courtney glared down at him.

"I'm fine." Steve pleaded from where he was sitting up in a hospital bed, a large bandage still wrapped around his abdomen.

"You had a piece of your large intestine severed! If they hadn't stitched you up and pumped you full of antibiotics we're talking likely risk of death by peritonitis here!" she ranted as she paced.

"They didn't even need to do that, my metabolism literally can't get infected." Steve pointed out reasonably. "And even without stitches those kinds of cuts heal for me very quickly. By tomorrow morning you won't even be able to see a scar."

"What if she'd hit an artery in there while she was stabbing you?!?" Courtney fumed, glaring down at him with her hands on her hips.

"Then Malevola would have rapidly gotten me to the emergency room, where prompt treatment would certainly have had me out of danger." Steve continued.

"People die in ambulances on the way to the ER all the time!" Courtney shouted.

"Courtney, I have literally had multiple bullet wounds and still walked over a mile back to the battalion aid station." Steve insisted. "My durability and my healing are significantly into the superhuman range. I still don't enjoy getting hit, but it's been a long while since I've had to worry about simple injuries."

"Simple!" Courtney exploded hysterically. "Do you- are you even-?!?"

Steve lightly grasped her hand and gently tugged her down, Courtney willingly falling into an embrace. "I'm sorry I scared you. I didn't stop to think that you really weren't familiar with how that part of my powers worked."

"I originally thought you'd just faked getting stabbed." Courtney sniffled into his shoulder as they hugged. "And when I found out you'd actually let her put the knife in the whole way then I thought you were gonna die. You can't- you can't just kiss a girl and then run off to heroically sacrifice yourself right away. 'M not Peggy, I couldn't handle that."

"You're a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for." Steve denied. "But I entirely agree with you, I don't want to kiss and run either."

"You'd better not." she insisted, their noses practically touching. "You promised that if I wanted to get rid of you, I'd have to pick you up and throw you."

"Well I'm glad you're not, then." Steve smiled, and she wiped the smug expression off his face with a kiss.

"You're still staying in this bed until tomorrow morning. Until after the medics clear you." Courtney insisted with a vindictive grin after they separated.

"So the truth is out, this is just revenge for how I benched you at the fire." Steve smiled back.

"Just for that I'm picking the most horribly unrealistic war movie I possibly can." Courtney's grin turned positively crooked.

"I can still wrestle you for the remote from here!" Steve reminded her.

Courtney already had the TV remote in her hand and was paging through the Netflix listings. "Oh hey, this one's supposed to be 'the Towering Inferno, only on a battleship!' And they somehow padded it out to almost two hours! Sounds perfect!"

"This has to qualify as some type of Geneva Conventions violation." Steve sighed as Courtney queued up the horrible movie and the opening credits rolled.

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 47

"Seriously, you walked off being stabbed in the stomach?" Nick Washington greeted Steve incredulously as the duo walked into his office in the Federal building.

"I have superpowers, why is this such a revelation to everyone?" Steve sighed wearily. "Anything new broken loose while I was still on the blocks?"

"I just got in, but we had a whole office full of people doing legwork all last night. The several robberies Coupe's statement referred to showed a disturbing pattern when we followed up on it and similar cases in the area." Nick said tensely. "High-pressure hydraulics systems, bulk lots of industrial-grade myomer, heavy machine tools, high-tensile steel… he's building something big. And in addition to what he's stealing, initial checks with the specialty manufacturers in the area who make similar things turned up that someone's been ordering large quantities of related items recently through a corporate front that leads to nowhere."

"If he's buying stuff for some massive construction project then his crime spree and territory grabbing recently isn't just him making a splashy entrance onto the scene, it's also a fundraising drive." Courtney reasoned. "But if the money is just the means to an end for Shroud, then what's the end? And how does the serum theft last night fit in?"

"That one we know, the phone taps picked up a conversation between Khopesh – the squad leader of the lab attack – and Toxic last night. The serum was apparently a contracted job – a Chinese biotech firm wanted it, and Shroud was going to sell it to them for a very hefty chunk of change. So his fundraising efforts just took a serious knock last night." Nick nodded.

"Which means Shroud's going to be pissed as hell at the mission failure and probably pick the whole job apart with a fine-toothed comb looking for what went wrong." Steve worried. "We need to think about pulling Coupe out soon."

"The problem there is that we need her still in place so she can give us another emergency attack warning if necessary. Because another thing that turned up is that the same front accounts that were doing those suspicious tech purchases? Have also been making bulk purchases of fertilizer." Nick pulled a sheet out of the loose pile on his desk and handed it over.

"He's buying that much?" Steve's eyebrows raised. "That's enough to build at least a dozen truck bombs, each at least as large as the one Shroud detonated on us. What on Earth does he even intend with that kind of bombing campaign?"

"The deliveries were made just yesterday, so it'll take him a few days more to finish making and planting them." Nick nodded. "But yeah, things officially hit condition panic when that one turned up. The boss lady's in the comm center right now with all the other alphabet agency SACs for LA, doing a conference call with DC about plans and options. We're waiting on what word comes down."

"We still need to extract Coupe soon." Steve said. "Despite everything we could do to sell it, the fact remains that Shroud failed a big job last night and she's one of the only two people who made it back. Doing a post-mission fault analysis would be elementary practice after that kind of failure, and the last thing she needs right now is Shroud's detailed attention."

"We're hoping to have her out of there within the next 48 hours, after we set up more surveillance and further penetrate their comms." Nick assured them. "But right now she's the only early warning of a potential mass casualty situation that we have."

"How many reinforcements can we get?" Courtney asked as the two of them sat down. "Like, doesn't the government have entire teams of heroes to send?"

"Not as many as you'd think." Nick explained regretfully. "Sure, we have some superpowered agents, but they're all split up among various agencies so it's not like there's an entire team of heavy hitters just sitting around waiting for an alert siren. And a lot of them have powers picked for utility rather than being trump cards like Phenomaman. The simple fact of the matter is, government jobs don't pay as well as comparative private sector positions. They never do. And add in that the majority of emergency situations that need superheroes tend to be situations that flare up quickly, even if there was a powerful national superhero team its basically guaranteed they'd always be thousands of miles out of position whenever something popped up somewhere. It's catch-22. The people who are sincerely interested in doing the most good they can generally won't take that kind of job, because it's a lot of waiting and never being in the right place at the right time. And the people who are in it for the paycheck generally won't take it because the private sector pays more and has better working hours. So they don't even try budgeting for that kind of team anymore, but just largely rely on local heroes always being available locally for obvious emergencies. It's why the privatized hero industry has gotten so large over the past ten-fifteen years."

"My original world was very different, but then again, we had much less enhanced people running around than you do." Steve opined. "As near as I can figure out your distribution of supers is several decades ahead of ours."

"Yeah, I saw that part in your original debriefing." Nick nodded. "Regarding the emergence of supers in the population, your timeline seems to be about where we were thirty-forty years ago. Nowadays there's enough superpeople to make an industry out of it, even if that industry is obviously having some teething pains and awkwardness as it evolves. But it is an industry, because heroing is a full-time job."

"Unless you're a billionaire playboy or something, kinda hard to be a superhero and still have enough time to work a full-time job in addition. And at the end of the day even the most altruistic hero has to pay their grocery bill and rent." Steve agreed. "So independents like Mecha Man are almost extinct nowadays because almost everybody needs a job – and even he was largely running off an inheritance. And in order to be able to pay their salary, whatever company employs a hero has to figure out some way to monetize that hero in addition to their doing the genuine 911 stuff."

"And thus all the bread-and-butter nonsense we sweated through." Courtney realized. "But don't local or state governments just hire heroes directly?"

"When they can, but usually not in large numbers because a lot of the time it's much more convenient to just subcontract as needed instead of budgeting them full-time. Plus, government employment usually pays less and works longer hours." Nick nodded. "Hence SDN's ongoing retainer fee from the state and the county of LA for basically handling all the super 911 calls for them."

"So normally a situation like this would be easy for you – SDN alone can turn out enough A-Teams to swamp almost any imaginable super-crisis in the entire metropolitan area, let alone calling on what supers might be privately employed by other LA corporations in a real 'mobilize everyone' emergency." Steve analyzed. "Except right now the list of people there we can safely assume are not possibly compromised by Shroud is largely Phenomaman, Blonde Blazer, and a good chunk of the Torrance branch… and until after the corruption probe you're running clears them, basically not anybody else."

"Yeah." Nick nodded. "So for conventional reinforcements we're just fine – by this afternoon we'll have circa one hundred SWAT and E-SWAT qualified field agents just in the field office, what with the augments that are arriving on top of our own local assets. And if we need more we can draw in additional tactical teams from ATF, DEA, Border Patrol, and others. If we really hit the panic button we can get the National Guard. It's just that Shroud is reeling in what looks to be most of the freelance supervillains in the LA area and anybody else willing to make the trip down here, so while we have a substantial numbers advantage against his rank-and-file we're currently barely making parity on the superhuman front… if that much."

"So how can we help?" Steve asked.

"Coupe's statement gave a list of several regular meeting places that Toxic links up with the action cells who aren't trusted enough to be told where the main base is." Nick said. "We just got warrants to bug those places, but that still doesn't actually get the bugs in place." He smiled. "Do you happen to know anyone with stealth-based superpowers and experience in bypassing security systems?"

"Hah, I used to think I just had 'villain powers' and now I'm doing warrant service." Courtney chuckled. "But I don't really know anything about planting bugs."

"We've got some training materials set up downstairs." Nick got to his feet. "It shouldn't take you too long to pick up the basics, they're designed to not require much engineering expertise to plant."

"And me?" Steve asked.

"Right now we're looking ahead to having you go in first when it's door-kicking time, but that means the tactical teams actually have to get to know you a little so you can coordinate your movements." He said. "Sullivan will give you a ride out to the training range we use, we've got some of the reinforcements there right now cycling through to knock the rust off a little."

"And it also lets you actually test if I know what I'm doing or if I'm just all talk." Steve smiled knowingly at the man.

"And it does exactly that." Nick agreed. "But first, we've got some paperwork to do."

"Paperwork?" Courtney sighed.

"What, you don't want to be paid for your contributions?" Nick surprised them. "And that means welcome to the wonderful world of government subcontracting. Just because you're not SDN anymore doesn't mean you can't be put on a temporary hero retainer."

* * * * *

"Proto-Pulse Test Number 18. Failure." Robert swore frustratedly as he finished helping extinguish the fire in Royd's testing lab.

"We pushing a little too fast." Royd said as he put away the empty fire extinguisher.

"Shroud's almost ready to make his move." Robert said urgently. "I have got to get the suit back in action before then."

"If only wishing made it so." Royd agreed sadly. "We getting almost enough power now, but de pulse stability just not staying stable."

"It's the one problem we can't seem to crack." Robert sighed. "Even the idea of using multiple of the lower-intensity Proto-Pulses in parallel along with a capacitor bank to avoid brownout isn't planning out. The 'cooled' Proto-Pulse reaction might take several days to destabilize instead of several minutes, but it does eventually destabilize."

"Something your papa – or whoever helped him - do to make de Astral Pulse run steady forever even at max reaction, dat I just can't figure out how to duplicate yet." Royd agreed.

"Wait, 'someone who helped him'?" Robert questioned.

"Like I tell you when we start out, you got two types of super gadget makers – de science nerds and de gearheads. Science nerd know de weird physics, de exotic particle reactions, stuff like dat. Gearhead know de nuts and bolts, de troubleshooting and mechanical assembly." Royd explained. "You could fix every armor system of de Mecha Man suit in your sleep and troubleshoot all de interactions, but you never know anything about how de Pulse work." Royd waved a hand up at the now-defunct armor. "But more I look at de suit, more I realize dat your papa was probably gearhead like you. Almost everyting in de suit from de muscles to de weapons to de sensors is all an adaptation of existing tech – very good adaptation in most places, innovative combinations, top tier precision engineering. But still all gearhead stuff. De Pulse is de only thing in de suit that need high-end science nerd to invent it, which is why I really start to wonder if your papa did make it or if someone else did. Maybe if we can find whatever person your papa do collab with back in de day, or at least deir notes-"

"I certainly don't know who he might have been working with." Robert mused. "But I know who might."

"You want to know what?" Chase glared up at Robert from his desk several minutes later.

"Who helped my father create the Astral Pulse?" Robert repeated. "Because right now me and Royd are almost entirely certain he didn't do it alone."

Chase reached over and tapped a command into his terminal, signing himself out and switching his incoming calls over to one of the other dispatchers. "Come on. If we're gonna talk about this, we're gonna do it in private."

Robert led Chase to the office supply room and shut the door, locking it from the inside. "Okay, spill. What's the big secret?"

"Given a choice I'd have gone to my grave never tellin' you a word of this." Chase said. "Because… you'll figure out when you hear it. But one of the two people I'm about to talk about is dead and can't defend themselves, and the other one don't deserve a damn bit of anybody's sympathy. And I don't know all the truth, just the parts I saw myself, so-" Chase waved an angry hand, dismissing his concerns. "The man who helped your father make the Astral Pulse was an inventor called Elliot Connors."

"Elliot Con-" Robert suddenly gasped in realization as he recalled exactly what file he'd read that name in recently. "Shroud?!?"

"One and the same." Chase acknowledged gravely. "You already know that he killed your daddy when he tried to become a member of the Brave Brigade along with us and then betrayed us. Helping invent the Astral Pulse to power the new Mecha Man Astral armor – the same suit you inherited – was supposed to be his entrance test."

"That night I was ambushed." Robert turned away, his face slack with shock. "Toxic taunted me. 'Shroud says he just wants the Astral Pulse… which we all know isn't really yours anyway.'" he imitated the villain's mocking voice.

"Yeah, that's bullshit." Chase spat. "Whatever claim he had on that thing, he lost it when he fired that bullet."

"Why does Shroud think he has a claim on it?" Robert turned to ask Chase. "And hell, if he wants an Astral Pulse so badly why doesn't he just make himself another one?"

"Deal they had was, Shroud helped your father invent the Pulse and in return he got on the team. Thing is, at the end your dad decided the man was too unstable to risk putting in the Brave Brigade. Shroud felt cheated and challenged your dad to a fistfight… and he got his ass beat." Chase looked pensive. "Your dad… was goin' on him pretty hard. I had to break up the fight before Shroud got himself seriously injured. I asked your dad afterwards why the hell he did that, and he told me was 'testin' Shroud's resolve'. Said if the man could still come back after that, after takin' that kind of trashin' and bein' told he'd already lost, and still want to try again, then he'd have proven he had the heart of a hero for real."

"That definitely sounds like dad's kind of tough love." Robert said mournfully. "But it didn't work, did it?"

"Shroud didn't come back the next day, he came back as soon as he could swipe your daddy's antique gun and then shot him with it. I- I almost made it there in time." Chase sagged. "Almost. Just a damn second too late, even with my full speed. I-I held your daddy's hand as he died, but he didn't have enough breath left for any last words. He was just gone." Chase wiped his eyes. "Ran the bastard down right afterwards, of course. Dragged his ass to jail, where it stayed for the next fifteen years. Didn't change anything, though. And they couldn't even keep him in there, and now we got all this mess."

"So is Shroud really doing all this just to get revenge on a dead man?" Robert wondered.

"Not to bust on you when you're already down, but he kinda already has." Chase said. "The Astral Pulse is gone, the suit's trashed, and…" he trailed off.

"And it's looking like we're not going to be able to reconstruct the Astral Pulse… and the only person on Earth who could possibly help us do it is the last person who ever would, or that we could ever trust." Robert slumped in depression.

"Damn straight you couldn't." Chase shook his head. "Just because some bad shit maybe happened to Shroud doesn't make him any less of a bad person. Even if he thought your daddy had been out of line-" Chase forced himself to continue after halting. "Even if your daddy had been, that still didn't make murderin' him the right thing to do. There were other things Shroud could have done. Maybe Shroud needed a top-tier engineer to help turn the Astral Pulse's theory into practice, but your daddy wasn't the only one good engineer in the world. Shroud could have taken his invention – and it was his invention – and gone on to do a world of good with it. But he didn't care about any of that."

"Science nerds and gearheads." Robert acknowledged. "There's a lot of the second, not many of the first."

"Some people are just plain rotten." Chase agreed. "Give 'em an opportunity to change, and they just go right back to hurtin' people and bein' selfish shits at the first setback."

"You're not talking about Shroud right now." Robert said. "And I honestly think you're wrong there. Not about him, obviously, but about the others."

"They're all still a hot mess." Chase denied heatedly. "Her in particular."

"Chase, Visi wouldn't hesitate to jump in front of a bullet for Steve right now, and probably for any of the rest of us as well." Robert denied. "I agree that she didn't use to be that way – hell, a few months ago she almost killed me-"

"The fuck what you say?!?" Chase exploded.

"Oh, right, I hadn't told you yet. When Visi was still back with the Red Ring, she'd been at the ambush. I hadn't seen her, obviously, but she was how the bomb got on the back of the suit." Robert admitted.

"And you still fuckin' trust this woman?" Chase gaped. "At least Rogers can be explained by the little head drainin' all the blood from the big one, but you don't even have that much!"

"When she finally confessed to me, she was barely able to keep it together." Robert shook his head. "I have never in my life seen anybody who regretted anything as deeply as her, and that includes the face in my own mirror right after I got out of the hospital after losing the suit."

"Why am I the only person in the world who can see past that phony face she's wearin?" Chase vented.

"Are you seeing it? Or is it someone else's face that you keep seeing?" Robert asked wisely. "Shroud had a chance to choose differently, and he didn't. Visi also had a chance, and she did. It's our choices that make us who we are, not how we're born."

"You chose to be a hero because it's how you were raised to be. Same as me, same as Blazer." Chase denied.

"If I was only the person I'd been raised to be – if that's all I ever could be - then I'd be a corpse on top of an empty suit right now." Robert shook his head. "I'm not saying that my new life is as thrilling to me as my old one was, or that I wouldn't like the old one back if I could get it. But I am saying that I'm not the same person I used to be… and that I couldn't be, because when my life hit the skids I had only two choices. Either I could adapt or I could self-destruct." He exhaled. "Visi chose 'self-destruct' for years, so did Flambae and the others. But the thing about that choice is… if there's still enough of you left to salvage, if you haven't quite hit your point of no return yet, then maybe you can choose again later. Find something new to live for." He smiled softly. "Find new people to trust."

"And Shroud?" Chase protested.

"The guy who did fifteen years' hard time, then immediately got back to obsessing on the exact same shit after he got out, and is now rampaging around doing random supervillain shit we can't even figure because the object of his obsession is gone?" Robert said knowingly. "Whether or not he has the capacity to change is a moot point, because he's made it absolutely plain that he just doesn't want to. But that's what Shroud wants. As near as I can tell his point of no return has already come and gone. But that doesn't mean everybody else's has."

"I definitely agree with the part about Shroud. As for the rest… maybe I got some things to consider." Chase trailed off softly. "But about your dad… I'm sorry if I told you anything that makes your dad look… not as much as you remember him."

"My deal with dad was already massively complicated before you said anything." Robert reassured him. "So it still being complicated now isn't your fault. If this whole tragedy was anybody's fault except Shroud's, then it was dad's. And he's already busy talking to God about his part in it so we don't have to carry any guilt for it anymore. Not me… and definitely not you."

"You're a good boy, Robert." Chase accepted a brief comforting hug. "You always have been, and you always will be." He smiled up at him. "So proud of you."

"Thanks, Uncle Chase." Robert hugged him back. "And, same."

* * * * *

Author's Note: I didn't expect to have a chapter today, I was just starting to type some stuff for later and then I got into a flow. So while it's a bit short, it's a complete chapter.

Steve is finding out that unlike SHIELD and the Avengers, the people in this world are not remotely used to some of the Cap level insanity he routinely gets into.

On the other front, the way my story is evolving I'm doubting if Robert is even going to get the suit ready to go again by the time the big Shroud fight happens. When I chose to put as big a divergence point into the story as Captain America being isekai'ed here, I forfeited the ability to make all the main plot arcs turn out the same way. But at least Robert gets a personal arc where whether or not he gets the suit up and running it doesn't matter anymore – he'll be able to live without it if need be, even if he doesn't necessarily have to.

And, Robert and Chase have the balcony talk only about a little more stuff as well, and not on the balcony.

cliffc999 · Thursday at 9:36 PM

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 47

"Please tell me you haven't entered this into any computers yet." Special Agent in Charge Davis implored her deputy.

"No ma'am." ASAC Washington answered. "I take it that I'm not going to be doing that?"

She looked back down at Steve Rogers' scores from the tactical assault course and back up at him. "Hell no. Hardcopy only, no duplication, single personal file, and no logging. And make sure you delete all the footage. If DoD ever got a sniff of these then we would never get their recruiter to stop camping our office for as long as Rogers was here. They would literally pitch a tent in the lobby." She whistled softly. "Have you ever seen anything else like this?"

"Ma'am, I haven't even heard of anything else like that." Washington acknowledged soberly. "But I'm still not sure that even we'll be able to recruit him. I could spot that they weren't eager to take even the temporary subcontractor position."

"That makes sense. She's the easy one to recruit; if we hook him then we hook her too, and if we don't then she won't. But Rogers…" She whistled out. "Basically his entire life to date has been defined first by his physical limitations and then by a military chain of command. He's barely in his second month of being really free to choose what he wants to do for the first time in his life, and he's just found someone he wants to share that life with. So right now he's emotionally primed to start pulling a Jack Reacher and just wander around enjoying his freedom from everything." Davis shrugged. "Well, if he chooses us then that will be his choice. But if he doesn't, it won't be because we either made him feel unwelcome or spooked him by pushing too hard."

"Understood." Washington nodded. "What did the all-agencies conference decide?"

"Follow me." she said, getting up from her desk. "The 1300 hours briefing is about to start, I'll get into it there."

"Everyone." Davis spoke from the podium in the briefing room a few minutes later. "Per the Attorney General's authorization, backdated to zero-hundred hours this morning the multi-jurisdictional task force 'Operation Duster' officially went active. The Bureau will be the lead agency of this effort, and I will be chief Action Officer for the task force. The primary objective will be the prevention of terrorist mass casualty events that are believed to be imminent in the greater Los Angeles area, and the secondary objective will be the location and apprehension of Elliot Connors, aka "Shroud", and his subordinates and co-conspirators."

"To briefly catch you up on what our sister agencies will be doing, the truck bomb already used and the explosives precursors purchases we've tracked gives ATF secondary jurisdiction." Davis continued. "So their war room and analysis center goes online parallel with ours and their people all get added to the legwork parade. DEA's primary contribution so far will be as a tactical reserve – all of their people with SWAT qualification are on one-hour alert cycle right now and sitting on their packed bags waiting for our call-up if we need them. Border Patrol is right behind them on the call-up list but for right now is primarily focused on increased scrutiny on all Customs frontiers in the district for certain types of shipments and components. In addition, they have three Predator drones assigned to their district for watching the border and I just called dibs on two of them. They're heading up here right now, and as soon as we get them they'll be taking watch-on/watch-off in a loiter over the LA area so that we'll have immediate access to overhead imagery whenever we need it."

"As for the National Guard, we haven't quite hit the threshold yet where they deploy but unless we're very fortunate it will be coming within the next several days. For right now the Adjutant General's office has warning orders out to the unit commanders to start rereading the contingency plans and preparing to execute them. And we mean all of the contingency plans. Multiple mass casualty events, coordinated bombing campaign, key infrastructure attacks, even mass evacuation if need be." She exhaled heavily. "This lunatic not only has all sorts of supervillain tech available and a genuinely frightening cyberwarfare capacity – and that reminds me, we're going to have to all switch to very strict data security protections and go practically back to hardcopy and word of mouth for the duration – but he's already gotten enough ANFO to build at least a dozen Oklahoma City sized bombs, and that's just what we know about. Maybe we're overestimating him greatly… but maybe we're not." she acknowledged professionally.

"When you say all the contingency plans, does that include Empty Quiver?" one agent asked nervously.

"Okay, not that one." Davis shook her head. "There are no even remote indicators at this time that Shroud has had any access to fissile material, so that's at least one blessing."

"Thank God." a nameless mutter floated around the room.

"Next up…" Davis continued. "Jenkins, I've had my head deep in the Shroud mess and nothing but for at least the past day. What's the current status on the SDN probe?"

"Preliminary sweep has turned up no active links to any of the flagged numbers or names relevant to the Shroud case." the other Assistant Special Agent in Charge answered. "On the other hand, our forensic accounting people cannot believe the preliminary results they're getting. Our White Collar Crime people and the Treasury are going to have a field day with all the crap that's churning up."

"Peculation?" she asked. "Embezzling?"

"Nope." He shook his head. "Right now it's looking like violation of mandated reporting requirements and Hollywood studio accounting writ large. You might remember that they had a board of directors shift and a limited buyout a few years ago? Well the new broom apparently decided that the prior profit margin just wasn't big enough, so they've started playing all sorts of games. The privatized hero companies are supposed to maintain a certain ratio of service capacity in reserve for actual superhero stuff as opposed to expending them on the non-emergency for-profit calls in order to keep their government charters, but SDN has been using every imaginable bureaucratic sleight of hand to shave the margins on those requirements for years. So essentially they're double-billing; the state and the county are paying them for a certain amount of service that they're only theoretically and not actually getting, as opposed to the substantially lower fees they'd collect as retainer for what the customer actually is getting. And then they run their people in the field like sled dogs to make up the difference, and then cook how they classify cases in the service logs to hide what they're doing. It's like… fuck, a cross between the Enron scandal and the bad old days before GPS trackers when basically every trucking company in the US was faking mileage logs to DoT, only with superheroes."

"How much of this can we prove in court?" Davis asked.

"After only a day of looking?" Jenkins said sardonically. "None of it, of course. I can't even take what we've got yet to a grand jury, let alone trial phase. I can only tell you what the preliminary sniff test makes me think might be going on. SDN has drawn enough layers of legal bullshit around everything that they're doing that it's the bureaucratic equivalent of the Berlin Wall. We can get through it, especially with the counter-intelligence aspects of the Shroud case giving us a way to get search warrants on some of this in a way that entirely bypasses the financial aspects, but it's going to take an irreducible minimum of time."

"When the press of urgency finally permits I have a young lady who used to work for SDN you need to speak to, as there's also at least one clear-cut case of privacy and labor law violations you can work with." Davis said. "But good job on getting even this much this early, and keep at it. The first priority is figuring out if it's safe for us to tell SDN about the Shroud case at all, though, because I really don't want to have to take on an entire supervillain crime syndicate just with assault rifles and one awkward squad of ex-villains and several independents."

"Understood ma'am." Jenkins nodded to her.

"Next up…" Davis continued.

* * * * *

"Is it always this boring?" Courtney pouted as she swung her feet in the air from where she sat perched on the edge of the cubicle desk.

"Every counter-terrorism case is the same." Steve answered her from where he sat nearby in an office chair. "The action phase only comes at the end of a lot of legwork and analysis." He pointed at the tall pile of paper sitting on the desk next to him. "Somewhere in that stack is a fact of genuine relevance to the case. It's almost a statistical certainty. The problem is finding it and picking it out from the million other data points buried in there that are completely irrelevant, figuring out how it hooks in to everything else you know, and doing all of that quickly enough it's actually still delivering useful intel instead of just being some analyst's hindsight memo six months after Shroud's already done."

"I don't really know anything about intel analysis and I have the attention span of a hummingbird." Courtney moaned. "Planting bugs this morning was kinda fun, but is there anything else I can be doing? Seriously, how can you sit still for all this? Are you even finding anything?"

"Just a few scattered references to some weird energy releases that don't seem to fit in with anything else we know, and a whole bunch of mundane stuff that probably doesn't mean anything." Steve acknowledged ruefully. "And I agree, this kind of work's not exactly fun. Still often necessary, though."

"Well, then just call me your angel of deliverance." SSA Sullivan broke in cheerfully as he walked up to their cubicle. "Customs has flagged a suspicious shipment coming through at Port of LA that dead-centers the pattern of Shroud's materiel orders, and the boss lady's authorized us to go do something about it. Time to suit up."

"Finally!" Courtney eagerly leaped to her feet as Cap secured his terminal and started gathering up all the papers he was working on to lock safely away. "What's going on?"

"Customs' computer search flagged a suspicious shipment currently sitting and waiting in a receiver's warehouse waiting for the customer to come pick it up later this afternoon." Sullivan explained as they headed down in the elevator. "So we're going to go sit on it and see who comes for it. There's several possible options from there depending on who shows up, ranging from bagging everybody at the drop to staying quiet and following the birdie all the way home. Idea on this one is you run out of costume and in tactical gear, so even if Shroud knows we're working the case now he hopefully still doesn't know that you're working it with us."

"Visi's powers are uniquely identifying, even if mine aren't so long as I'm not carrying the shield." Cap acknowledged. "Then again, her entire point is that you don't see her coming."

"Exactly." Sullivan agreed as they reached the basement. "Locker rooms are over here, we'll finish briefing on the way."

* * * * *

'Federal agents! Hands in the air, hands in the air!" Sullivan cried through his bullhorn.

The components shipment had been called for by just one rented truck and several anonymous Red Ring goons, so the decision had been made to just intercept the shipment and arrest everyone. If Shroud wasn't even risking one of his cell leaders on this pickup then the probability was too high that there would be at least one intervening stop-and-search for security's sake before taking the components to the main base, which ruled out following the truck back there or having Invisigal plant a tracking tag in the shipment.

And so they'd simply waited for the delivery truck to leave the shipper's warehouse and then cut it off in traffic with the armored Suburbans before it had gotten two blocks. Over a dozen agents in full tactical gear – as well as Captain America and Invisigal, both of them dressed in identical body armor and helmets – surrounded the several men in the panel van.

"Don't do anything stupid!" Cap called as he kept his assault rifle trained level on the driver's compartment. "You have nowhere to go!"

"Fuck!" the lead Red Ring goon swore as him and his fellows dismounted the truck slowly, the street lit in the evening twilight. "Okay, okay, don't shoot, we're not armed."

"Kneel down, hands behind your head." Sullivan ordered them.

"Nah, don't think so." One of the goons smirked. "We know your rules, cops. If we don't got guns or knives, you can't shoot us, right?" Their cybernetic implants began to grow red as the lead thug showingly cracked his knuckles. "So how's about we settle this mano-a-mano?"

"Fall back!" Cap ordered as he slung his rifle, and the FBI agents began to open up the distance. The thugs laughed and stepped forward, confident in their cybernetically augmented strength… only for the first one to go flying back into the side of the truck hard enough to dent the paneling, as Cap's kick caught him full in the chest and sent him into the air.

"The fuck?" the second thug marveled as Cap effortlessly parried his superhumanly strong punch and then trapped his arm and KO'ed him with his offhand. The third one barely had a chance to raise his fist before Visi jammed a hand taser into his neck from behind and laid him out, and the remaining two thugs who'd jumped off the back of the truck shrugged off several beanbag rounds from the agents' underbarrel launchers before Sullivan's flashbang grenade sent them staggering and set them up for Cap and Visi to finish their takedowns.

"Okay, this new 'enhanced agent' thing is working out really well for us so far." One of the subordinate agents congratulated the two ride-alongs as matters were efficiently trussed up in metahuman-rated restraints and tossed in the back of the prisoner transport. "We getting you guys permanently or is this just a pilot program?"

"They're still working on that." Cap temporized. "But I'm glad we were here, this would not have gone remotely as smoothly otherwise."

"If even the commonest street busts are turning into enhanced encounters, I'm going to have to talk to the boss lady about new rules of engagement." Sullivan agreed. "If not somehow getting a new issue of gear. But in the meantime, let's head back and get these guys processed… and then we've got another job to suit up for. The wiretaps picked up a cell meeting happening early this evening, and we're going to crash it."

* * * * *

"We're in costume for this one?" Cap asked as the approximately fifty Enhanced SWAT tactical agents all met up at the assembly point in the darkness of late evening.

"We're talking at least three superhumans in there plus maybe ten to twenty Red Ring cyber-goons." ASAC Washington agreed as he put on his own tactical helmet. You'll need the shield and Visi will need freedom to use her powers to the fullest extent.

"We've been cleared hot on the cybered-up ones, right?" A burly assault agent asked.

"Yeah." Washington agreed gravely. "The boss lady consulted with the US Attorney's office and DoJ has concurred – for the duration, active use or threat of use of their super-strength augments is now considered lethal force. We keep playing patty-cake like we used to and Shroud's guys will just swamp us and tear us apart."

"Understood." Another agent meaningfully patted his assault rifle.

Cap looked at Visi. "You sure you want to deploy for this one? I've done this before… you haven't."

"I can't sit out. You need me." Visi looked at Cap sadly.

The veteran soldier traded a meaningful look with the senior FBI agent, and they both nodded in acceptance of the inevitable.

"All right." Washington said. "This is the feed we're getting from the drone right now." Every agent there pulled up the relevant stream on their phone's or PDA's Bluetooth. "Infra-red is picking up all their signatures. The ones marked with yellow dots are rank-and-file, red dots are confirmed superhumans. First phase is Captain America and Invisigal takes out their rooftop sentries quick and quiet, then they signal when the rest of us can move in. Once we're in position we stack up here and here. Team One, we breach the doors and enter on this axis. Team Two waits until the noise starts, then takes the ram tank in through this wall and hits them in the flank. Team Three, you're strategic reserve, come in as called. Cap, Visi, you go in at the same time Team One does but you enter here and drop straight on their command element. Team leaders, make sure everybody understands that Invisigal will be running loose in this segment so don't have your axis of fire cross through that space because we won't be able to rely on seeing where she is. Any questions?"

"We leading off with tear gas?" Team One's commander asked.

"No point. We already know one of the augments Shroud can potentially have given his people acts as breathing protection." Washington answered. "So Team One leads off with flashbangs as they breach, everyone else uses them on hardened individual targets as necessary. Outside of that it'll all be our enhanced operators and our weapons."

After briskly answering the next few questions that there were, Washington finished. "All right. We've got the warrants signed, we've got the usage-of-force authorization, and we've got the assets we need. It's time to start making Shroud really feel the heat. Let's roll."

The invisible heroine climbed up over the edge of the roof and took out the first of three Red Ring cyber-thugs walking patrol on the warehouse roof without a hitch, clearing a gap in their coverage to allow Cap to climb up too. Running swiftly yet quietly around the edge of the roof, Cap readily downed the next two guards and then paused to look down through the skylight and check out the situation. Morphus and two costumed villains he didn't recognize were in the center of the warehouse floor, addressing perhaps fifteen more Red Ring cyber-thugs.

"Rooftop secure. The rest are all assembling, not alerted yet." Cap quietly said into his communicator. "Problem is, the cell leader is the one that's living gel – punching or shooting him is not going to do much good, and we don't have any exotic weaponry. Do we abort?"

"No." Washington decided. "If necessary, we'll let him run. These guys are planning a major raid on a bank tonight, we can't let it come off."

"Understood." Cap nodded. "Hold a minute. I'm sending Visi back to pick up some of your heavy breaching charges, I've got an idea for something I can try." He nodded to her and she immediately turned and started climbing back down to where the assembly point was over half a block away.

"Gonna try to blow him up?" she asked Cap as she returned with the charges.

"Something like that." Cap nodded.

"All right, we're in position. Get set… breaching in five… three, two, one-"

Cap was leaping down through the skylight, his shield on one arm and safely carrying Visi in the other, even before the breaching charges tore open the main warehouse door and multiple flashbang grenades landed amongst the assembled cyber-thugs to daze and disorient them. The Captain parried the energy blasts of one villainess with his shield as he absorbed the impact of the twenty-foot fall with his legs and Visi disappeared into nothingness as she leapt to the attack.

"FEDERAL AGENTS! DROP YOUR WEAPONS, DROP YOUR WEAPONS!" the bullhorn-equipped strike team leader blared even as the ram tank breached the warehouse wall and another SWAT team entered. One of the disoriented cyber-thugs pulled the trigger on his laser, sending a wild shot well over the FBI agents' heads, and then that triggered several more of them into firing. The warehouse echoed with the raucous blare of automatic weapons fire as the FBI men returned fire, and men began falling.

As the conventional troops began to bleed each other the cat-themed martial artist Visi had targeted staggered as she materialized just as her furious left hook tagged the side of his head, and she laughed and faded away again before his furious counterpunch could land. The villain staggered as she faded into view again, having dropped down low into a kneeling sidekick to his shin, then fell flat on his back as she leaned back on both hands and brought both heels flashing up into his descending chin.

Cap meanwhile had already downed the energy-controlling villainess by simply shield-charging directly into her and sending her sprawling, then slamming his other hand into the back of the shield and punching her in the face with the shield-flat yet again. He then turned and brought the shield up barely in time to parry a furious blow by Morphus, then leaped up on top of a nearby handrail and did an acrobatic flip over the charging blob-villain's head. In mid-leap he snatched one of the heavy breaching charges off of his belt, flicked the timer on, and jammed his hand wrist-deep into the villain's amorphous body.

The force of the oversized plastique charge was absorbed by Morphus' physiology, but still left the villain howling in agony as a goodly-sized chunk of his mass was explosively separated from him. Cap stepped back and raised his shield for cover as several of the FBI agents took their cue and began tossing more flashbang grenades at Morphus to stun and disorientate him. Wounded, confused, and seeing that most of his forces were already down, the blob-villain turned and fled for his life, shoving aside several hapless FBI agents as he ran for the wall-breach the ram tank had made and fleeing into the night.

"Let him run." Washington ordered. "We barely have anything that can hurt him, and nothing that could contain him if we caught him. Command, tag and track him with the Predator – if we're lucky he'll lead us back to Shroud."

"No such luck." The watch center back at the Federal building answered. "Blob boy was smart enough to think we might have an aerial unit available – he just ripped open a manhole cover and went into the storm drains. God only knows where he'll come up."

"Well, at least we caught this many." Cap sighed. "And stopped Shroud's latest big move in his fundraising drive. Visi, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Visi said soberly, staring down into the warehouse where the assault teams were efficiently handcuffing and restraining the cyber-goons who were still alive… and where the ones who had already fallen in the battle were either being given medical attention or marked for burial as needed.

"Come on." Cap said, leading her gently away. "Is this your first battle where anyone died?"

"Yeah." she said. "And I know that it wasn't just legal here, it was legitimate. They would have killed all of us in a heartbeat if they could. The ones pulling triggers were actually trying to. It's just…"

"It's just this was your first time." Cap agreed. "And that this wasn't what you ever did for a living."

"No it wasn't." she agreed.

"Standard procedure for cops and agents is they talk to the counselor after every incident like this, particularly after their first one." Cap said. "I'll ask Nick to arrange something for you when we get back."

"That isn't-" Visi cut herself off. "You really think I need one?"

Cap's embrace was her only answer, and the only one she needed.

* * * * *

Shroud turned away from the multiple-monitor bank in his office and leaned back in his swivel chair, steepling his fingers.

"Unacceptable." he intoned coldly.

"Yeah." Toxic said. "I guess those two didn't blow town after all. And we had fifteen million riding on that lab job, and nothing's gone right for us since."

"The revenue shortfall is serious, but the lack of confidence that the failures are starting to produce in my leadership is even more serious." Shroud intoned coldly. "Worst of all is the cause of these failures."

"From how you're talkin', I'm assuming that 'sheer bad luck' ain't a theory?" Toxic asked.

"No… although the Captain did his best to make it appear as such." Shroud said coolly. "But he tipped his hand regarding the shipment containing the backup mag-bottle components."

"The fucking FBI rolling up on Morphus' team meeting and him barely being able to get his ass out of there while we lost a whole crew in the process isn't the worst part?" Toxic asked incredulously.

"Toxic, precisely how do you imagine a dozen mundane agents overcame five cybernetically-augmented foot soldiers without using lethal force?" Shroud asked impatiently.

"You put it that way, then yeah." Toxic agreed. "Obviously the Captain was there too... but if he wasn't in costume then, then it ain't just him working the police scanner or getting tips from dispatchers, he's back in federal agent mode full-time or something. Boss, what the fuck are we stepping into? And how the hell are we stepping into it?"

"Captain America is responsible for all of our recent reverses somehow. I am certain of that fact." Shroud intoned coldly. "Things only started deviating from the plan after our manipulations released him and Invisigal from their obligations to SDN."

"But WHY?" Toxic said. "Him being here on a mission made no sense! Him only restarting that mission after he got fired makes even less sense-!" Toxic stopped as if he'd hit a wall. "Shit shit shit! There's one way this does make sense, but we'd completely overlooked it!" Toxic turned to look back at Shroud. "What if he was genuinely here trying to retire from whatever the fuck he used to do before… but then we ruined that for him?"

Shroud paused and blinked in furious thought, as multiple previously-unrelated or irrelevant data points suddenly assumed a new shape for him in his brain's analytical augmentation implants. "You… are correct." Shroud reluctantly conceded. "SDN and it's… mundanity, it's domesticity, was providing an escape for the Captain. An escape from a previous life that he had considered at least partly emotionally unsatisfying. Until our own actions voided that possibility for him while simultaneously revealing to him the existence of an enemy that he would perceive as similar to enemies he had fought before."

"So he goes right to the fuckin' FBI, who totally believe him because they have access to whatever classified service record he had that SDN didn't have access to, and now we're a major league counter-terrorism case." Toxic swore. "Boss, this is really not fucking good for us! Do you have any idea of how heavy the heat can come down when the Feds take the brakes off like this?"

"What is the progress on the primary objective?" Shroud ignored Toxic's panicked rant.

"We've almost got enough dominance into the organized crime networks of LA that the information we need will all have to flow through us." Toxic answered worriedly. "It's just a matter of days before we get what we need there. But the trick will be surviving that long."

"Then we must be prepared to ruthlessly triage as necessary." Shroud said. "As well as to repurpose old tools to new plans." Shroud stood up and walked outside his office, looking down into the assembly bay where his giant spider-mech was almost completely assembled. "I will take charge of the efforts to retool that for an entirely new scenario from what we had originally prepared it for. You will lead the probe necessary to determine where the Captain is getting the information to target his strikes against us from."

"Where do I even start looking for something like that?" Toxic asked matter-of-factly.

"There are two primary possibilities." Shroud said coldly. "And I will provide you with the plan for how to test them both simultaneously."

* * * * *

Author's Note: I managed to get in the 'Cap's firing range scores' gag that was requested. And 'I haven't even heard of anything like that' is of course a 'Tombstone' reference.

More seriously, the intersection of techno-thriller and superhero genre produces the inevitable result; eventually someone was going to have to shoot someone, and now people have to deal with that. Cap's long since used to it, even if he doesn't prefer it, but Visi – even though she wasn't directly involved with it – is going to have to adjust to it. And decide whether or not she can continue to live like this or not.

The non-Morphus villains here are non-canon nameless throwaways. Shroud's just getting to the 'recruit a lot of the muscle available in LA' stage.

And Shroud finally begins to clue in, even he's still adding two plus… well, to be fair, it actually is two this time. Cap's 'retirement' was not voluntary, and Shroud is still refusing to accept he actually is a dimensional refugee, but Toxic actually got the essential gist of it. The man's crude, but he's not stupid.

cliffc999 · Friday at 1:01 PM

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 48

The insistent knocking on his apartment door woke Robert a couple hours after midnight.

"Who the fuck is it?" he angrily yelled at the door as Beef woke up barking. "Seriously, the building had better be on fire! It's the middle of the night!"

"Open the door." Coupe's voice begged quietly. "You're in danger and we need to leave!"

Robert immediately snagged the taser from where it lay on the floor next to the plastic chair he slept in, then remembered he wasn't dressed and dropped it long enough to pull on his pants. Opening the door, he was face-to-face with an anxious winged heroine, A quick look around revealed the hallway was empty.

"What's wrong?" Robert asked her.

"Shroud's ordered your kidnapping." Coupe said worriedly. "I'm supposed to be scouting ahead for the rest – they're right outside! We only have a couple of minutes!"

"Did you warn the FBI?" Robert asked as Coupe led him swiftly down the hallway, his arms full of a struggling dog.

"I couldn't. This is the first moment I've gotten alone since Toxic originally called us in to brief us." Coupe said quietly as they went swiftly down the emergency stairwell.

"Send 'em a message now." Robert decided, and Coupe pulled out her burner phone to compose and send a text… only to stare alarmedly at the screen. Zero bars. No carrier.

"Damn it, there's no reception in here. I need to get outside-" Coupe began.

Robert drew a panicked breath. "My cell phone works in here just fine. If you're being jammed- shit! They sent you in first as a test!"

"I'll be damned, you actually caught onto the trap before you finished jamming your dick all the way into the sausage grinder this time!." Toxic's voice sneered from the stairwell landing above them. "I guess even old dogs can eventually learn new tricks… if you beat 'em hard enough."

"Robert, run!" Coupe immediately called as she sent a flurry of knives at Toxic. The acid villain sneered as they dissolved on his corrosive coating, and he flew unscathed through her barrage of fire down the stairwell and sent Coupe flying with a superstrong punch.

Robert dropped Beef and rolled under Toxic, heading back up the stairwell. "Is he seriously acting like the idiot girl in a horror movie and trying to get away from the bad guy by going up-?" Coupe's flying sidekick took Toxic in the jaw as he'd turned to stop and look mockingly back up at Robert, and he fell back and hit the stairs with his hips and his head. "Ow! Okay, that one's on me." Coupe grimaced in pain as Toxic reached up and caught her descending arm with his corrosive grip, scorching the metal of her armored bracer as he flipped her up and over his prone body to land face-first on the landing.

"My backup's gonna be here any minute, so you might as well-" Toxic sneered as he regained his feet and prepared to stomp the prone Coupe… only to fall back screeching and coughing as Robert hit him full in the face with a CO2 blast from the fire extinguisher he'd been going for at the top of the stairs. Temporarily blinded and staggering, Toxic then took the thrown fire extinguisher square in the forehead as Robert double-overhanded it with his full strength and sent the villain flying the full length of the stairwell to crash heavily into a heap at the bottom.

"Time to go!" Robert helped Coupe up before vaulting over the railing to land on the descending half of the stairwell. "Beef, come on boy!" The little dog ran eagerly back down to his master and Robert scooped him up. Coupe half-spread her wings and glided down the stairwell to where Toxic still lay prone at the halfway point, and came down to drop a vicious stomp kick directly into Toxic's face backed by the full momentum of her fall just as he was starting to push himself back up, sending his head crashing back down into the floor. Another furious heel stomp knocked the villain out.

Barely a minute later the two desperately fleeing heroes exited the stairwell at the bottom. "Which way?" Coupe asked.

"We split up." Robert decided. "You can't carry me while flying and you're much faster. Get to Cap and the others, tell them what's happening. As soon as I'm in my car I'll get to-"

Twin blasts of searing lightning struck the duo from down the hallway, knocking Robert unconscious and staggering Coupe through her protective costume. Coupe's hastily thrown knife was intercepted on its path to White Lightning's chest by the gel body of Morphus, who then simply stepped forward and enveloped the helpless heroine as her punches, kicks, and slashes did nothing to him. Cut off from oxygen, she soon went limp.

"Go find out what happened to Toxic." Morphus ordered his cohort brusquely as he picked up the limp Robert in his other arm. "Job's done, now we get clear."

"What about the dog?" White Lightning asked, looking down at the stunned Beef.

"Grab it and dump it back in the guy's apartment, I guess." Morphus shrugged. "What kind of asshole fucks with someone's dog?"

* * * * *

"At least one of you has been a considerable thorn in my side." Shroud's merciless, toneless voice came from the teleconference viewscreen that had been set up as the two heroes hung upside down by their ankles from chain hoists that had been rigged to the ceiling. The two heroes had been drugged unconscious, only to awaken already securely restrained and surrounded by an audience of curious villains and thugs. "But you will no longer be allowed to exercise that privilege."

"Fuck… off…" Robert gasped weakly from where he hung, tied hand and foot. "You couldn't even have the balls to come here and do this yourself… Elliot."

"Leave him alone!" Coupe insisted from where she was suspended almost ten feet away upside down from a hoist of her own, her arms and wings securely bound in chains. "He doesn't know anything!"

"Maybe not, babe, but it's still fun!" Toxic giggled sadistically as he slapped the beaten and battered Robert on one of his garish new bruises, making him grimace. "But you're right. Maybe we should be talking to you."

Robert looked away from Toxic at the dimly lit silhouettes surrounding him from where he hung over what looked to be the floor of an empty storefront in a dying strip mall. He recognized several of the villains who'd been assembled as an audience to his torture and Coupe's punishment, but there were more than a few unfamiliar faces.

"Do your worst." Coupe sneered at him. "Do you really think you know more about pain than my old teachers did?"

"Oh, torturing you is pointless." Toxic acknowledged. "But I still owe this asshole a little more for that fucking fire extinguisher. And you care about him, don't you? He's your friend." he sneered.

"What do you want." Coupe glared back at him.

"Maybe I want to take my acid-coated finger… and jam it deep into Roberto's eyeball until I'm melting through the back of his eye socket." Toxic's grin twisted into a sadistic rictus. "So maybe you should come up with a topic of conversation to distract me."

"Who are you reporting to?" Shroud intoned evenly from the teleconference screen that had been set up in the improvised interrogation chamber.

Coupe stubbornly set her lip, then winced as Toxic's hand drew nearer to Robert's eyeball. "The Captain. And the FBI."

"For how long?" Shroud inquired.

"… about two days." Coupe said resignedly after a long, thoughtful pause. "He made me an amnesty offer during the laboratory attack. I accepted, and deliberately 'lost' the vial to him."

"How did he know of the attack in order to be there at all?" Shroud persisted.

Coupe's silence was met with Toxic walking over to where she was struggling against her restraints. With a knowing look back at Robert, Toxic reached out to touch her throat with his corrosive fingers-

"Cap was working with me." Robert burst out. "When I got the alarm call I tipped him and Visi off privately in addition to what SDN authorized me to dispatch. He was lucky enough to be closer."

"When did the Captain starting working with the FBI?" Shroud asked.

"I'm not entirely certain." Coupe answered.

"Almost since the day him and Visi lost their jobs." Robert contributed. "Blonde Blazer made the introduction for him, she knew a guy at the local field office."

"Hmmm." Shroud considered.

"What kind of heat are the Feds bringin'?" Toxic broke in.

"You think they'd tell me?" Robert shot back.

Toxic walked back and started caressing Robert's hair, and the acid began to lightly singe the man's scalp as the acrid scent of burning hair filled everyone's nostrils.

"They had to talk to the Special Agent in Charge to arrange my immunity! That's as high as I know it went!" Coupe shouted hurriedly.

"So, major case then. But maybe not major major case, if we're lucky." Toxic wondered out loud.

"How do you contact them?" Shroud asked.

"… I have a dead drop for routine reports. Emergency messages are sent by text, from a burner phone." Coupe eventually said.

"This one?" Toxic held up the phone that had been taken from the unconscious Coupe's pocket.

"Yes." Coupe nodded slowly.

"How do you authenticate messages?" Shroud asked. "What is the code?"

"I don't." Coupe shook her head.

"She is lying." Shroud answered after a momentary pause. "Toxic."

The acid villain caressed Robert's eyelid with his thumb, raising a painful welt. "What's it gonna be, babe? Are we playing Truth… or Dare?"

"All right, all right!" Coupe shouted desperately. "I have to ask an irrelevant personal question in every message, about someone we both know! If it's all business then they know I'm talking with a gun to my head!"

"Toxic. Compose a message as follows-" Shroud rapidly dictated a brief yet concise statement about a meeting Shroud intended to conduct in person approximately eighteen hours from now at a location Robert didn't recognize. "End it by inquiring about the Captain's… relationship status with Invisigal."

"Oh, that leaves me so much room to play with." Toxic giggled as he typed. "But nah, if I asked any fun questions then they might suspect I wasn't actually Miss Serious here. Aaaand, done." He hit 'send' on Coupe's burner phone and the text was dispatched.

"The trap has been baited, and the necessary information obtained. And that brings us to the second purpose for this gathering." Shroud intoned.

"… damn it." Coupe slumped. "Robert, I'm sorry. I thought he might at least spare you… but apparently not."

Robert looked around at the assembled villains. "Oh, that's why the audience. To watch us be made examples of." he realized.

"Got it in one!" Toxic caroled cheerfully. "Especially the traitor here. Fuckin' seriously, babe, what the fuck were you thinking? You had an express train to easy street, and you gave it up for people who weren't even payin' you? Who'd already backstabbed you?"

"Oh, I got backstabbed by both sides." Coupe spat back at him. "But one of them at least apologized and tried to make it up to me."

"Yeah, well, they can carve that on your tombstone." Toxic giggled. "'At least we said we were sowwwwy!'" he mocked. "And just for that, you get to go last. Hey boss, what part of Mecha Putz here do you want me to melt off first?"

"Before we get started, I want a word with your boss." Robert glared upside-down at the viewscreen displaying Shroud. "What was even the point?"

"You. Your father. Chase. Your little team of misfits. All of you persist in the delusion that you can defeat evil by being 'good'. But there is no defeating human nature. You cannot stop evil… but you can control it." Shroud replied.

"No, I don't mean your schemes here in LA. That's just money, power, control, standard bad guy stuff. I get it." Robert scoffed. "I meant back in the day, when you shot my father. What did doing that even get you?"

"Your father cheated me." Shroud hissed angrily, leaning forward into the viewscreen. "And so I took my revenge upon him!"

"If even Chase had to admit that maybe something had been hinky back then, then I'm pretty sure Dad did cheat you." Robert acknowledged soberly to the shock of everyone present – Shroud most of all. "But even then, why shoot him? You invented the Astral Pulse." Everyone gasped again. "You needed Dad to actually turn your design into a finished product, because you needed a master precision engineer for the actual assembly, but the key theoretical insight that made the Pulse possible in the first place was all yours. Lord knows I've never been able to reproduce the damned thing, and you'd better believe I've been trying."

"You… are actually willing to acknowledge this?" Shroud's voice betrayed his shock even through his mask's electronic voice distorter. "Publicly, in front of your enemies?"

"Yeah… because like it or not, it's the truth." Robert sighed. "And if there's one thing I've learned from the Z-Team, it's that if you're not honest with yourself then you'll never have the slightest hope of un-fucking whatever fuck-up might happen to be your life. But the thing I just can't get is why you murdered my Dad… when all you'd have needed to do for your best revenge was outshine him."

"What?!?" Shroud sputtered.

"Y'know, for such a 'master planner' you really didn't stop to think it through back then, did you?" Robert bit off the words as if he were cutting a steel rod into segments with a torch. "All my Dad had from you was one Astral Pulse that he could never duplicate without your help. One shiny gizmo to run one suit of armor with and nothing more. But you had a working design that you could have gone and hired any other engineer of equal skill – and there's a lot more skilled gearheads out there then there are science geniuses – to help you put into production. You could have manufactured all the Pulses you wanted. Solved the energy crisis. Done more good than a thousand Mecha Mans ever could have. You could have become the most famous scientist in the world. Nobel Prize, place in the history books… and my Dad publicly exposed as the man who'd defrauded you, when you made yourself a bigger public benefactor than him." Robert snorted. "But instead you chose this, and now Robert Robertson II is a dead hero and Elliot Connors is just another villain. And this... this petty crime drama is as big as your ambitions will ever get."

"You have no conception of the boundlessness of my ambitions… or the capacity I will have to realize them!" Shroud ranted. "My technology places me one step ahead of you – of SDN, of the government, of everyone! I can calculate your moves a thousand places ahead while you all fumble in the dark!"

"Then you've probably already predicted the deal I'm going to offer you now." Robert said calmly. "But for the benefit of the others, I'll spell it out. Let Coupe go, and you can get whatever further revenge you can find against a dead man by torturing his son to death as slowly as you can manage."

"Uh, we can already do that anyway, rust-brain." Toxic looked incredulously at the ice-calm Robert. "And then her, right after you!"

"Not if he bites off his own tongue and bleeds to death." Shroud corrected Toxic. "Which he is threatening to do right now if I do not accept his bargain."

"Robert?" Coupe sputtered incredulously. "What- why would you even-?"

"Because I was your dispatcher." Robert looked at her resolutely. "It was my job to supervise you… and to make sure that you were given a fair chance to do your job, and receive all the support you needed. And I wasn't able to do that for you then, so might as well try again now."

"No!" Coupe protested. "I offer the same bargain in return. Let him go, and I will willingly submit to your tortures." She glared at Shroud. "You know my background – even if you doubt that he is capable of ending his own life in cold blood, you know that I am."

"Your offer is refused." Shroud said coldly. "Knowing that the legacy of Mecha Man – and also the legacy of she who betrayed me – will both end in nothing but despair, suicide, and failure will be more than sufficient revenge for me. Toxic, begin… and now let us see if either of them has the courage to actually carry out their threats. But I very much doubt that he-"

And then the world flared brilliant golden as a blazing meteor crashed directly through the roof to land thunderously upon the floor in a three-point crouch. The shockwave of her impact sent the nearest villains sprawling back as the world echoed a heroine's wrath.

Blonde Blazer stood tall and then raised slightly into the air between Robert and Coupe, staring directly at Toxic as her eyes glowed like miniature suns. Shroud opened his mouth to comment and she contemptuously flicked an energy bolt into the viewscreen, shattering it before the master villain could even speak a word.

"You might think that you have the advantage." Blazer stated as matter-of-factly as if she were holding a business meeting. "That if you all attacked at once, even I would fall eventually." Her lips drew back from her teeth. "But I still wouldn't go down easily or quickly. So all of you can leave now… or half of you can die here."

Toxic opened his mouth, but his words forever went unsaid as Blazer leaned forward slightly and pointed her finger at him. "And you would be the first to fall, no matter what."

A long moment passed as every villain in the room held their breath. Toxic's eyes flickered left and right, measuring angles, judging odds… and then his fists lowered.

"She's right." Toxic looked at his subordinates. "This isn't the time or the place. Everybody out the back, we've got to clear the zone before half the cops in town show up behind her."

"Don't let me keep you." Blazer scoffed as the villains backed away and then fled for their lives. After waiting long enough to be certain they weren't coming back, she turned and easily lifted Coupe and then Robert free from the hooks they'd been hung upside down from and helped them to the ground.

"How'd you find us?" Robert asked after Blazer had made sure both heroes were all right.

"Toxic didn't think to turn Coupe's phone off after he sent that phony message, and Cap called both me and the FBI as soon as he'd gotten the text." Blazer said. "The night duty officer at the FBI had access to their phone tracking algorithm and a recon drone, so finding this building and scouting it out only took us a couple minutes."

"Lucky us." Robert agreed. "You were just in time. A couple minutes later and Toxic would have started melting my face open."

"Then I'm glad I didn't stop for drive-through." Blazer tried to joke. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Little banged up, but that's nothing new." he said. "Coupe, can you fly?"

"Yes." she answered, flexing her now unbound wings. "Where are we going?"

"Downtown, as soon as we can. Shroud gave away something important during his interrogation and monologueing, and we need to call a strategy conference as soon as possible." Robert decided.

"It's an hour before dawn, the people in charge won't be awake yet. Is it that immediately urgent, or can we stop to get you a change of clothes first?" Blazer asked.

"It's still that early? Thought I'd been out for longer." Robert wondered. "Well in that case, maybe some breakfast first."

"I'm sure they'll have something in the cafeteria." Blazer eye-rolled at Robert's macho stubbornness.

* * * * *

"Coupe, I want to apologize." Cap greeted her from where she was sitting in an interview room in the Federal Building being fussed over by a paramedic.

"What for?" Coupe asked him.

"Not pulling you out earlier." Cap shook his head. "You were exposed for almost four full days, and the safe window wasn't anywhere near that long. But they wanted you kept there until they finished locking in enough remote surveillance to get an attack warning, and I didn't argue strongly enough against that when I should have. And for the past day we didn't even strictly need to, but we were all so busy planning our own raids and operations that I just didn't think to revisit it and neither did anyone else." Cap slumped angrily against a nearby wall. "I screwed up, and that screw-up almost got you and Robert killed."

"You weren't the one making the decisions." Coupe shook her head. "And you certainly didn't intend for this to happen. Nor did Robert… or Blazer… or even the government, I would imagine." She gave a single, mournful chuckle. "I can barely even comprehend my own thoughts right now. Look at me, sitting here trusting people."

"You remind me of another woman I knew once." Cap nodded as the paramedic finished checking Coupe out and left. "Also a child soldier and an assassin, and also someone who escaped that life and became a loyal agent and then later a hero. She had a little trouble getting used to the whole 'trusting' thing too at first, or so she told me once. But once she finally accepted it was for real, it became a very acquired taste."

"Did she remain a hero, once she had finally become one?" Coupe asked sadly. "Because I didn't."

"Yes you did." Cap said. "I mean, look at where you're sitting now."

"I joined Shroud willingly." Coupe shook her head. "As soon as I thought I had been betrayed. I didn't even stop to think about how I could possibly have remained the better person. Having been cheated – or so I thought – allowed me to readily justify my immediate descent to the basest depths to myself." She snorted. "Much like Shroud himself did once."

"And that lasted maybe a whole day before you clued in, while Shroud is still stuck there and will be for the rest of his life. So the real question is, are you ever going to make the same mistake again?" Cap asked her simply. "Or are you smarter than that now?"

"I'm not sure I'll even be allowed to make mistakes again." Coupe shrugged. "What is my legal status at present, anyway?"

"That's the good news." Cap said, handing her the manila folder he'd been carrying. "They just got that from the US Attorney's office, it's a written commitment to granting you immunity. You'll still have to finish all the formalities of giving your statement, having your plea validated by the court, et cetera, but they can't legally back out now unless you break your end first."

Coupe stared down wonderingly at the sheet of paper in front of her. "But- I didn't even get them anything. Scraps of information at best."

"You got more than you give yourself credit for. But more importantly, you were willing to die to save Robert's life." Cap acknowledged. "And that definitely counts for something."

"He was equally as willing to die to save mine." Coupe shook his head. "I-I can't even process such a thing. How do you deal with that?"

"You thank God that you have friends like that, and then you thank Him again that they didn't need to." Cap replied simply.

"Where the bloody hell is she?!?" a furious voice echoed in the hallway.

"In here!" Coupe called out, and the door opened to reveal a frantic Punch Up wearing a visitor's badge and being trailed by a very nervous junior agent.

"And that is my cue to give you two a moment alone." Cap smiled as he stood up and strode to the door. "My advice?" he told the agent. "You'll probably want to station yourself on the outside of the door."

"Protocol requires that I keep the escortee in plain view at all-" The furious twin glares he got from both Coupe and Punch Up immediately silenced the escorting agent. "Yes sir."

"Come on." Cap said good-naturedly, and the two men stepped outside and left the reuniting couple alone.

* * * * *

"And that's what we know." ASAC Washington finished, as SAC Davis and the Special Agents in Charge for the other federal agency LA field offices and several other senior officials murmured to themselves around the conference table. "Shroud's power is apparently some type of probability calculation tech, but it has limits. Coupe was able to lie to him about the exact time of her recruitment, for example, apparently because the version of the story she gave was at least as probable a scenario as the actual recruitment had been."

"Which means further delay only works in Shroud's favor." the National Guard general said. "Everything he's done, all his operations, the pattern isn't just him building his resource base but also him deliberately picking fights with his probable opposition under controlled conditions. It's a reconnaissance in force."

"Normally the longer you drag something out, the more it just turns into attrition warfare." the Border Patrol SAC agreed. "Normally. But with this guy the more you fight him, the more he learns about your moves. Soon enough it gets to where you can't hope to touch him at all while he dances around you."

"Which implies that the only reason we've had as much success as we have to date is because we've had a surprise advantage." SAC Davis agreed. "An advantage that we are already losing."

"Also because the balance of forces still heavily favors us." the senior DEA agent put out. "And we can tilt that equation even further if we mobilize the Guard."

"Only in non-metahuman assets." ATF reminded them. "There we barely even have parity. What's the status on clearing the A-Teams, or getting independents or other allies?"

"I can guarantee myself, Phenomaman, maybe a couple of other A-listers I personally know, and my entire branch office." Blonde Blazer answered. "The real sticking point is SDN corporate. All it takes is one leak there to give Shroud advance warning we're coming and then it gets a lot bloodier than we'd like it to be even if we brought half the superheroes in LA."

"And we won't even begin to be all-clear on them in the next couple of days, let alone today." SAC Davis agreed. "As for networking with heroes directly by word-of-mouth and going unofficially…?"

Blazer shook her head. "Everybody I already listed are those who'd be willing to work with me even without SDN officially signing off on it. Most of the other people I'm acquainted with wouldn't want to risk their paychecks by taking 'uncleared work', even on government authorization."

"Seriously, what do you people even do over there?" DEA groused.

"Enough to be keeping our White Collar Crime people eating very well in future months." The FBI SAC agreed ruefully. "But we're getting sidetracked. You've all heard the analyses, you've seen the list of probable locations we've turned up from ELINT and overhead surveillance, and the old drydock that we tracked Toxic to from the site of Blazer's hostage rescue with the drone is almost certainly the current location of Shroud and the manufacturing facility he set up for whatever doomsday option he's been ordering all those components for. But that last piece of intel in particular will get stale in hours, not days. So ultimately the decision is, do we roll the dice now or hope for a sure thing later?"

"Normally I'd say 'later'… but not only are we on a lit fuse of unknown length with the potential truck bomb problem, but we just got through the explanation of how delay favors Shroud more than us thanks to his forecasting tech." ATF said.

"Agreed." DEA nodded. "Sometimes you just can't get a sure thing in this line of work, but you've got to go anyway."

Border Patrol and the National Guard also nodded.

"Very well then." SAC Davis agreed. "Nick, go tell all our people to start mustering. Gentlemen, your agencies already all know their place in the action plan – get your people ready to execute. Blazer, we'll need all the heroes that you can get us standing by and ready to move inside of three hours." She stood up and squared her shoulders. "I'll make the call to DC and then meet you all in the command center. Jasper," She nodded to the representative from the US Attorney's office. "Start the process on getting the warrants signed. Operation Duster goes into the final phase today."

* * * * *

Author's Note: Yes, me taking a shot at canon Shroud for being chickenshit enough to take a dog hostage was deliberate. *g*

During this fic sometimes I have felt lazy as an author, because the canon game gives me so many good moments that I feel like I'm just retyping them here. Blazer's hostage rescue is absolutely one of those moments, even if the context of it was obviously different here.

Amusingly, this chapter ended up becoming basically the Robert, Coupe, and Blazer show, with our principals reduced to background characters. Hell, I think this is the first chapter since chapter one in which Visi gets no appearance at all. But, the plot flows how it flows.

And now all I have to do is get through the climax… and then what comes after the climax.

Heh. "All." Those chapters are going to be bears to write. But still, at least I got this story into the home stretch. Sometimes an author doesn't even get that much.

cliffc999 · Friday at 7:49 PM

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 48

The wolf whistle broke into Steve's thoughts as he stripped down to his undershirt.

"Hey there." He turned to see Courtney ogling him appreciatively from where she was leaning against the wall of the small conference room he was changing in.

"Hey." Steve smiled back, and then deliberately half-turned to give his girlfriend a profile view.

"I kinda miss when I could make you blush." Courtney smiled at him saucily.

"Well, once it became something you'd had hands on familiarity with, kinda hard to be shy about you enjoying the view." Steve sassed her.

"I am losing my touch if you can score on me that easy!" she chuckled as Cap finished changing shirts and reached down to pick up his tactical vest.

"What's wrong?" Steve asked her quietly as he put on his body armor and raised his arms to let Courtney fasten the straps for him, then turned to help her start putting on her own.

"Was I that obvious?" Courtney sighed, dropping her mask of insouciance to give him a brief, worried hug.

"Your smile wasn't reaching your eyes." Steve nodded. "Nervous?"

"Your smile isn't reaching your voice." Courtney looked at him wisely. "And yeah, I am. They're gearing up like it's going to be Gulf War III, and so are we." She exhaled briefly. "Even I'm strapping on the armor, although I'm not weapons qualified."

"You've never been on an operation this big, but our piece of it will still be the same as always. We won't be doing anything we haven't done before." Steve assured her.

"No, I'll be doing at least one new thing." Courtney answered pensively. "The last raid we went on, the one where Morphus got away from us – they carried at least half a dozen of Shroud's mooks out of there in the morgue wagon."

"Thought you had a word with the counselor about that this morning." Steve asked.

"I did." Courtney said. "I just… years of street fights and skirmishes, against crooks and cops and superheroes. Months of hero patrols. Even the recent ops with you. But I never had to confront before that people sometimes die doing this. Even Robert only almost died that night. And now I'm all jitters because I can't think about anything else."

"Are you afraid that you might get hurt, or that I might?" Steve probed knowingly.

"You." Courtney admitted immediately. "Which is stupid because you're the most combat experienced person in this entire task force and you can just walk off being stabbed or shot and you're wearing advanced SWAT armor and carrying that shield, but-" She shook her head. "Look at me. Even back when I was screwing everything up I never hesitated to jump back in there and screw it up some more the next time, and now I'm a nervous wreck."

Steve gave her a hug and a forehead kiss. "It's not stupid at all. You're new to the idea of going into a firefight alongside somebody that you really care about, that's all. But you're smart and you're tough; you'll find your footing when you need to."

She trembled slightly in his arms. "You ever have that nightmare where you're sure that they only let you have something nice so that it would hurt more when you lost it right away later?"

"Yeah." Steve shocked her with his somber admission. "Having it a little right now, in fact."

"Oh." Courtney whispered softly. "I thought it was just me." she trailed off.

"It's a thing I've already had a lot of experience carrying." Steve acknowledged. "So it doesn't show much on my face anymore. Doesn't mean I'm not still feeling it though."

"But you're not even hinting that you'd like me to stand down, though." Courtney shook her head.

"I might be tempted to try… if I had the slightest belief you ever would." Steve admitted. "But no." he shrugged. "Not you."

"Yeah. And not you either." Courtney acknowledged, and then she whooshed out a breath. "It's barely been six weeks, and here we are. We really did this kinda whirlwind, didn't we?"

"We sure did." Steve agreed, and then cupped Courtney's chin in his palm. Her head tilted up and their lips met, softly and then urgently.

"When this case is over I don't want to do this anymore." she said after they broke apart. "Not heroing, not agenting… not fighting in general. Not for a while, at least."

"I think that's a good idea." Steve agreed. "We've got some money coming in from the government and we both like to live simply, it'll be enough for a while."

"And when my big windfall from SDN arrives then I can be a woman of leisure." She grinned crookedly at Steve. "I'd even have enough to hire a full-time housekeeper. Make him cook me dumplings every day."

"Or we get ourselves a motorcycle, ride around the country, see the sights." Steve counter-suggested.

"Sounds nice." Courtney agreed. "Did you know that I've never really been out of LA?"

"I've never really been to the West Coast." Steve acknowledged. "I had a talk with Flambae once about how he might like to try finding peace. Us taking some time to go try and find a little peace of our own? I'd love that."

"Lookin' forward to it." Courtney's adorable little smile lightly pierced Steve's heart yet again, before she leaned in to kiss him once more.

I love you. Her eyes shouted what her voice couldn't. Please stay safe.

Steve nodded once in somber reply to her entreaty. Love you too.

* * * * *

"Captain! Visi!" Flambae greeted the duo enthusiastically as they emerged from the SWAT van along with a squad of heavily armed agents. The assembly area for the raid against Shroud's suspected headquarters was almost two blocks away in an unused athletic field, and the entire parking lot and grounds were covered with men and women in full body armor and weapons loadout, ominous black Suburbans, and heavier armored MRAPs. Two of the largest vehicles even had remote-controlled weapons turrets, with 40mm grenade launchers in the mounts. Also present were Blonde Blazer, Phenomaman, and the Z-Team and several other heroes from the Torrance branch.

"Visi." Golem rumbled affectionately at her. "He been treating you right?"

Visi blushed amusedly. "Absolutely."

"Flambae!" Cap greeted him as the two men exchanged a hearty handshake. "How have you guys been?"

"Bitch, we're havin' to come in and work on a Saturday, how do you think we feel?" Prism laughingly answered for him.

"Seriously, though." Sonar laughed. "You guys left this Wednesday, and in barely four days we're already going to wrap it up? How much was SDN holding you back?"

"Hey, don't discount the contributions of maybe half the federal agents in Southern California." Cap pointed out amusedly. "Right now we just feel like the two little rocks that set off an avalanche."

"Oh yeah, as soon as they heard the words 'truck bomb' up there it was like Congress officially declared war or some shit." Visi nodded lightly. "You would not believe how much brass I saw at the last big meeting."

"There's even a drone overhead right now, would you believe?" Coupe said softly as she swooped in for a landing.

"Coupe!" Malevola greeted her enthusiastically as the Z-Team burst briefly into cheers. "You made it!"

"Aye, that she did!" Punch Up's voice broke in as he ran over from where he'd caught a ride in one of the other FBI vehicles.

"Are you guys FBI agents now or something?" Flambae nodded at the duo's government-issue tactical gear and Cap's full weapons loadout alongside his shield.

"Just subcontractors." Cap shrugged. "As soon as this case is over, the suits come off."

"You coming back to SDN?" Flambae asked.

"SDN's going to have a huge re-org coming in the near future." Visi answered. "Turns out all the corpo bullshit coming down from on high was because there was some serious friggin' in the riggin' going on up in the head offices, and after this whole Shroud terrorist mastermind thing wraps up the Fibbies' next big project is gonna be a white-collar crime investigation in the privatized hero industry."

"You guys will be fine." Cap reassured them. "In fact, your jobs will get easier in the long run when the rules all change back to something more sensible. But it's going to be interesting for a little while."

"So you ain't comin' back." Prism shook her head. "Makes sense. Sonar told us about how much settlement bucks Visi can be expectin' for what that dumbass from HR pulled. If I had that much comin' in and didn't also need to keep my job to keep my parole-"

"Which is something else the DA's office is going to be looking into." Coupe broke in quietly. "SDN corporate seems to have not been entirely compliant with the legal requirements there either - which since the breach is on them and not you means that you'll get the chance to renegotiate new and better deals like I did."

"Nice." Golem grumbled approvingly.

"Yeah." Visi reassured the team. "So you guys will be fine after this. And me and Cap… right now, we just want to take some time off. Explore what we've got going at our leisure. Take a damn vacation."

"Then make sure to send us a postcard." Flambae laughed gently. "Ah, but now the boss lady is coming. Looks like it's time."

Blazer swooped down gently next to the group. "It certainly is. Let's go, final briefing is starting."

All the heroes gathered by the command vehicle along with all the fire-team leaders for the small horde of agents that had gathered for the assault on the small private shipyard/drydock that was Shroud's apparent main base.

"All right." Nick Washington began. "Early this morning Toxic was traced to this location by overhead surveillance, and he hasn't left yet. Comm intercepts within the past hour have picked up several phone calls from this location from both Toxic and Shroud. Most of the calls were scrambled, but several were in clear – enough to confirm his presence here." Nick's expression turned sober. "There's no way that wasn't deliberate. There's no way that Shroud doesn't already know we're coming. He's calling us out to a showdown. The other teams are already hitting every Red Ring site we know or suspect across the city, but the main action is going to be right here."

"Do we know where all his fertilizer bombs are yet?" One of the senior team leaders asked after raising his hand to be called on. "Or is Shroud just trying to bait us all into his own version of Masada?"

"The National Guard contributed several remote explosive detection systems, like the guys in Iraq used to sweep the road ahead of convoys. We've done multiple overhead passes with the little drones and the chem sniffers." Nick answered. "Wherever his main explosives stockpile is, it doesn't seem to be here. Which doesn't mean that we aren't still risking stepping on smaller IEDs as we go in, because there's enough trace industrial chemicals from the old shipyard to hide that much. But at least there aren't ammo dump quantities laying around anywhere nearby."

"Probable opposition?" Captain America asked.

"Infrared signatures mark large heat concentrations in the target buildings." Washington nodded. "Furthermore, one of the reasons we started the raids on the secondary sites first is so that we could mark which superhumans were present on the other sites, and if we were really lucky draw out some targets from the main site if Shroud sent reinforcements." Nick shook his head. "He didn't, and if we assume that every Red Ring supervillain that we haven't already seen somewhere else is in that building, then our hero contingent is slightly outnumbered. And all of Shroud's inner circle people are on that 'probably here' list." Nick exhaled meaningfully and continued. "Plus, there's a large - and unknown - electromagnetic and heat signature waiting in the middle of that shipyard. Whatever hole card Shroud has yet to turn over – and it's certain that he has one, or else he'd already be running for the border – he's got it waiting."

"Conventional forces?" Blazer asked.

"There's maybe forty of them and almost a hundred and fifty of us." Nick answered flatly. "If it wasn't for the superhuman element, this would be a stomp. As is… we're going to need your people to go above and beyond today, or else the next step involves the full military option. And as much Shroud doesn't want to see that happen, we'd really rather not."

"Agreed." She nodded.

"So let's review the plan one last time." At Nick's signal, Prism used her powers to project a large holographic image of the basic layout. "We remount our vehicles and do the final ride in along this route, with our two superheavies plowing the road." He nodded to Blazer and Phenomaman. "Final dismount here, and these are our routes of advance. Golem will act like a minesweeper truck for the main column advancing here, flankers will advance here and here with air support from Blazer as needed. Our two heavy MRAPs set up here and here for fire support." Icons popped up on the holo map as Nick spoke. "Captain America takes the rest of the heroes ahead and kicks the main door in here, and we all come up behind and take up firing positions here and here. After that the bad guys get to let us know what their contribution will be, and it's back to basics from that point on – find cover, maneuver, and return fire."

"Rules of engagement?" The next seniormost agent asked.

"We have the state of emergency declaration." Nick answered. "So we don't shoot them if they're unarmed or surrendering – and remember, the cybernetically augmented ones count as 'armed' even if they're using bare hands - but that's the only point at which we stop shooting them. We'll make the bullhorn announcement when we kick the door, but honestly, the bad guys already know who we are. So don't even stop to challenge, just engage. Any other questions?"

Silence fall across the assembly.

"Then that just leaves us with our final contingencies." Nick said. "As I said earlier, Shroud is absolutely calling us out to a showdown. And while the man's crazy, he's not stupid. He's got a hole card in there that he thinks can win, even against these odds. If he didn't think that, he'd already be over the nearest border. And the only way we can find out what he's got is to go poke the bear and see what happens. So in addition to everything we brought with us we've got two further escalations – Closing Pitch, and Thunder Run. And I want to take this opportunity to remind everyone, especially our heroic auxiliaries, that if we have to call in Thunder Run then you need to get the hell out of the zone immediately. Don't stop to trade another punch with the guy in front of you, just run. Or else you'll be collateral damage, along with everything else near you. Everybody understand that?"

A murmur of affirmations rose from the crowd.

"Everybody ready?" he asked, to a louder chorus of yeses.

"Then let's roll." Washington pulled his armor's helmet on and fastened the chin strap and everyone else there in tactical gear did likewise. Prism dissolved the map display, and everybody loaded up.

* * * * *

A dull explosion brought the slowly advancing column to a halt yet again.

"Landmine." Golem grunted unnecessarily as he casually brushed off the debris. "That makes three."

"Movement on the rooftops!" one of the long riflemen on overwatch called, and two groups of Red Ring thugs showed themselves above the roofline flanking the advancing column. The snipers immediately began dropping targets as everyone huddled in place, and the flying heroes swooped in to start dealing with the ambush. Several wounded agents fell back to the casualty collection point as the last of the Red Ring riflemen went down.

"Jesus, it's turning into Black Hawk Down out here and we're not even at the door yet." One of the SWAT team leaders muttered. "Can we pick up the pace a little?"

"Resume advance." Cap ordered as they drew up on the final approach to the shipyard. Everyone tensed as they entered the open ground in front of the gaping double doors on the land side of the drydock, but no further ambushes were sprung. "Okay, we're standing by for door kick."

Blazer and Phenomaman floated silently down towards the assemblage of heroes spread out in loose formation on the ground, as the agents all drew up into fighting positions behind the cover available from the nearest buildings and concrete parking barriers. "Acknowledge ready for door kick. Execute at your discretion." Washington acknowledged.

"I'm covering the roof." Blazer's eyes never ceased sweeping the line of windows and the rooftop above the large cargo doors, looking for ambushes.

"Taking the door in three… two… one…." Phenomaman flew right up to the centerline of the two large doors, flexing as he prepared to tear them right off their hinges-

-before an enormous red beam of energy smashed through the door from the inside and sent the alien hero rocketing back into the adjacent dockside warehouse half a block away and then right back out the other side. The tremendous bwoooooong! sound of the energy cannon temporarily deafened everyone there, and Blazer turned back from where she'd watched her hapless teammate be ragdolled completely out of the action to gape in alarm at the massive mechanical shape now lumbering out of the warehouse.

Fully the size of a three-story building and wider than it was tell, the giant mechanical spider mecha stepped menacingly forth into the afternoon sunlight, the giant red circular firing port that it had just fired its main beam out of glaring like a baleful mechanical eye.

"And come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly." Shroud's voice mocked them from the mecha's PA speakers, as Toxic, White Lightning, Morphus, Khopesh, and several other Red Ring villains advanced from the dim interior behind the advancing mech, and the glowing red augmentations of dozens and dozens of Red Ring goons shone from the darkness behind them.

"Fuck." Nick swore from his plotting table in the command vehicle. "So it was a giant robot. We knew it was a possibility from the parts list of stuff Shroud had been buying, but-" He squared his shoulders. "Someone get me a status on both Closing Pitch and Thunder Run, now."

Blazer fearlessly swooped to the attack, only for the spider-mech to sidestep with a nimbleness that belied its size and catch her with a slashing side-sweep of one of its front legs, sending her sideways off the dock and out over the open water. Prism immediately fired the brightest dazzle attack she could at the cockpit window while Flambae bathed the mech's central sphere in the mightiest flame blast he was capable of. The Red Ring goons all started blazing away with their laser rifles as the small army of federal agents began firing back from their own fighting positions, and the long riflemen standing overwatch started picking targets and dropping them.

"Follow me!" Captain America called, and the remaining Z-Teamers unhesitatingly ran behind him to meet the charging villains. Toxic went straight for Invisigal, who flipped him the bird as she vanished and Cap feinted a swing at the acid villain, only to sidestep himself and switch targets to Khopesh as Punch Up advanced into the breach and took advantage of the opening to ram a powerful fist up into Toxic's defenseless groin.

"That's for almost meltin' my girl's face off, ya prick!" Punch Up shouted as he followed up with a ferocious series of blows.

Khopesh gaped incredulously as his energy scythes, which had never failed to cut anything before, spalled off of the shield as if he'd attempted to attack a tank with a foam rubber baton. His surprise was short lived as Cap then fed him the edge of the shield right into his teeth, then followed up his blow with a forward cartwheel kick that brought the full momentum of his outstretched leg down into the villain's teeth like a swinging axe.

White Lightning hit the ground choking as Visi reappeared out of nowhere to put her in a chokehold, then nimbly leaped free just before the villainess tried to shock her way out. Distracted, White Lightning wide open as Coupe's knives disabled both of their arms immediately before her furious flying punch sent the electric villainess sprawling. Coupe then looked up in alarm and frantically barrel-rolled to the side immediately before one of the mechanical spider's legs came crashing down where she'd been and impaled itself several feet deep into the concrete of the dock. All around and underneath the mech heroes traded blows with villains as they tried to dodge the massive hazard swinging and stomping and blasting all around itself, while the heavier hitters stayed on the main target.

"Jesus Christ, look at the size of that thing!" a voice broke in on the tactical net. "Command, Hammer One and Hammer Two are on the gunline. Are we go for Thunder Run?"

"Stand by, we're probing its defenses!" Nick answered back. "Missile teams, engage!"

The several squads of National Guardsmen who'd been setting up shoulder-fired Javelin anti-tank missiles acknowledged the command and fired. The ordnance acquired the targets and began their pre-programmed pop-up attack sequence, but the 'brilliant' missiles were effortlessly plucked out of the air by laser blasts from the secondary blasters mounted in the spider-mech's two front legs.

"No dice, Command!" the senior Guardsman replied. "That thing's got computer-controlled point defense and energy-weapon turrets!"

"You copy that, Hammer Flight?" Nick followed up. "Stay the hell out of range until we can cripple that thing's point defense at least, otherwise it'll be suicide."

"We'll still risk it if need be, but acknowledged." Hammer One acknowledged as the two A-10 ground-attack fighters from the California Air National Guard adjusted course to stay several miles offshore.

Golem looked up at the spider-mech from where he'd just finished throwing Morphus well out into the water and reached out to try and pin the nearest leg to the ground and hold the mech still. Explosions began to ripple all up down the mech's upper body as the two heavy MRAPs finished switching their weapons loadout to anti-armor loads and the fully-auto 40mm grenade launchers started trying to crack the mech open with HEDP rounds.

"Fall back! Open up to let the artillery have a chance!" Cap called, and the hero squad broke loose from the villains they'd been skirmishing with – many of whom were already downed – and headed back towards the rear defensive line. Emboldened by their enemies' retreat and too inexperienced with urban warfare to understand the trap they were charging into, the Red Ring thugs followed the retreating heroes into the open and were sitting ducks for the entrenched federal agents. A withering barrage of fire began to cut them down, and the remainder started throwing their weapons away and running for their lives.

The dazed Toxic looked up from where he'd been left curled up painfully on the ground by the retreating Punch Up to see the entire momentum of the battle shifting. "Yeah…" he grunted heavily to himself. "Sorta figured that would happen. Now-" He staggered to his feet and retreated back into the dimly lit interior. "-either the big play works or it don't. But either way, I'm fuckin' outta here."

Blazer swooped back in to attack, followed shortly by Phenomaman, but neither of them could land a solid hit. Impossibly nimble for a thing of its size the mecha turned direct charging attacks into glancing blows, or redirected the heroes' momentum away with precisely-timed parries from its forelegs. Another pair of anti-armor missiles were plucked out of the air by the mecha's point-defense programming, and the heaviest attacks of the heroes that were actually connecting were only doing chip damage at best.

"This was his big plan?" Flambae shouted as he barely sideswiped in time to avoid being slapped out of the air by one of the spiders' legs. "Put all that effort into building a giant robot and just step on everyone?"

"If it's stupid but it works, then it's still kicking our ass!" Visi fumed from where she was huddled behind cover, feeling as useless as a kickboxer in a giant robot fight.

"Ahhh, there we go." Shroud sighed with satisfaction as the spider-mech's central 'eye' glowed brilliantly red again as the main gun finished recharging. "Who should die first?" He chuckled evilly. "Rhetorical question, of course. There is only one proper choice."

Captain America stood tall, deliberately running to where the only thing behind him was the open ocean, as Shroud turned the entire mech to face him and locked in with the main gun. "I can do this all day." He scoffed.

"Admirable… but misguided." Shroud sneered, and Visi shrieked in alarm as the mech's main cannon – the giant particle beam that had sent the mightiest hero in Los Angeles flying away as if shot out of a cannon and knocked him unconscious for over a minute – unleashed its full devastating force all on a single man. The world flared red as Cap vanished from view in the searing beam…

… only to incredulously return to normal as the beam faded away to reveal the super-soldier standing there entirely unharmed, the Mighty Shield proudly thrust forward. The entire battle paused to gape at how enough firepower to cut a skyscraper down like a tree had just utterly failed to so much as shift the feet of a single man.

"IMPOSSIBLE!" Shroud gasped.

"We've got him surrounded, and his main beam has a three minute recharge! Hit him with everything we've got!" Cap ordered triumphantly, and all the gathered heroes swooped to the attack.

Cap waved up to Blazer as she swooped in over his head and tossed her the shield, and with an eager grin on her face she flew forward as an invincible battering ram, turning the glancing hit on the dodging mecha into a wicked slash down its flank as the shield's invincible edge was driven by her strength deep into the layered armor like a hot knife into butter. Cap turned to see Visi tapping him on his shoulder, eagerly holding up a satchel charge, and with a smile he grabbed her and tossed her up towards the bottom of the mech's central sphere as she snuck past Shroud's defenses invisibly and rematerialized just long enough to stick the charge on the bottom hatch and yank the fuze. She dropped back down into Cap's waiting arms and Blazer dropped the shield back down to him just in time for Cap to raise it as cover against the blast overhead. Sonar swooped in as the blast temporarily rocked the mecha enough to make it momentarily drop its defenses, flanked by Coupe, and the two of them eagerly tore into what gaps had been opened up in the mech's armor to start cutting into what wires they could reach. Waterboy then soaked down the exposed and severed wires, causing them to spark and short circuit furiously.

Shroud fell back slightly, the mech leaking smoke from several seams as it began to accumulate damage, but the danger was hardly over yet. Flambae was brought crashing down to earth as one of the slashing spider legs finally connected, and Golem barely saved Prism and Malevola from being incinerated by the mech's secondary laser turrets. Malevola managed to teleport on top of the mech and damage it further with her magic greatsword, but had to immediately leap free again before Shroud sent her flying with a violent heave of mecha acrobatics.

"He's adjusting to our attacks!" Blazer shouted as the momentum began to shift again. Despite the heroes having only one target to concentrate fire on now, Shroud was only doing better as the fight dragged on. More and more often the heroes began to miss entirely, and more and more Shroud was connecting with blows and blasts and staggering and exhausting them. "And he's about to finish recharging, and he won't be stupid enough to shoot at the shield this time!"

"Retreat!" Washington ordered. "All agents, fall back to the rear!"

"It's like we figured!" Cap agreed. "Once the opposition turns over its hole cards, Shroud has everything he needs!" He exhaled heavily. "But the good news is, we've just made him turn over his last hole card-"

"-and we haven't." Blazer agreed, smiling.

"Everyone, it's Closing Pitch!" Cap called into the mike. "We're doing it now!"

"Acknowledge Closing Pitch!" Washington ordered. "Popping smoke now!"

Blazer and Phenomaman helped carry the non-flying heroes clear of the zone as the supporting grenadiers switched from anti-armor to smoke rounds, covering the entire battlefield in zero-visibility hot fog. Everybody with super-strength started throwing what large chunks of anything they could reach, occupying Shroud's point defense with incoming threats that he had to monitor and engage. Prism flooded the smoke with holographic decoys of herself and the others, further distracting Shroud and extending his target-tracking capabilities to their utmost limit

"Okay, he's distracted and blind! This is your window!" Cap called into his radio-

-and Shroud, already extended to his limit of action dealing with all the incoming attacks and with half his sensors cut off by the smoke, failed to notice in time as the latest hero to arrive roared down out of the sky and spiked the spider-mech's central body with a massive grappling hook. The heavy anchor cable attached to the hook snapped taut as a winch furiously reeled in, yanking the hero right down out of the sky to crash directly into the top of Shroud's mech -

-and the blazing blue energy blade emerged triumphantly from the fist of the Mecha Man armor and, driven by the full power of Robert's furious descent as augmented by the grappling hook, cored directly through the nigh-invincible metal hide of the mech and into the main engine compartment.

"What was that you were saying about being 'a thousand steps ahead', Shroud?" Robert mocked him from his own armor's cockpit. "Don't seem to have predicted this, have you?"

"The Astral Pulse!" Shroud shrieked. "YOU have it?"

"Nah, just running on a couple of the shitty prototypes hotwired in parallel and a bunch of surge capacitors." Robert replied matter-of-factly as all the heroes wolfpacked Shroud's beleaguered and pinned mech with every attack they had. "I'll be lucky if this setup lasts for ten minutes before I short something out. But you'll be lucky if you're still alive in five."

"Give it up, Shroud!" Blazer shouted as her and Phenomaman dug their fingertips deep into the rents already made in the armor and tried to peel the sphere open, while Mecha Man kept battering it with his energy blade and heavy blasters. "Just hit your ejector seat! I can already see your engines starting to catch fire! If you keep this up much longer-!"

"To the last, I grapple with thee." Shroud quoted as he dragged the grappling Mecha Man with him towards the edge of the dock, step by struggling step. "From hell's heart I stab at thee-"

"I'm getting some anomalous instrument readings- shit, his pulse reactor's destabilizing!" Robert shouted. "He's going to blow!"

"Get him the hell out of here!" Blazer shouted, as Shroud deliberately drove his mech's legs deep into the concrete of the dock and engaged his anchor clamps. Malevola desperately used her portals to sever one leg as Mecha Man slashed another, and Blazer and Phenoaman combined their strength to sever a third-

"Too late, heroes." Shroud's voice mocked as his mech's destabilizing core built to critical mass. "For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee-"

"Everybody hit the dock!" Cap ordered. "Crack open the cement!"

All the heroes present switched from attacking the anchor points Shroud had driven into the concrete pier to smashing the concrete itself, and the last attachment finally came free. Mecha Man flared all his thrusters to full emergency overload and tackled Shroud's spider mech right off the pier and out over the open ocean, the two mechanical titans grappling with each other to the very end.

"Robert! No!" Blazer screamed in agony as she tossed the severed mecha leg she had been burdened with aside - and then the ejector seat that Royd had built into the latest iteration of the Mecha Man armor deployed. Robert's escape system blasted him out the back of the armor and well into the air as Shroud's spider-mech detonated in a giant red fireball of plasma underneath him. Robert's dangling, parachuted form helplessly floated in the air as the fireball welled up to engulf him - and then Phenomaman pulled him free at the last moment, speeding them ahead of the shockwave and back towards shore.

"Thanks, man." Robert said dazedly. "Oh, and I'm really sorry for kissing your girl."

"You are a worthy hero, and did not deserve such a fate." Phenomaman acknowledged Robert amiably. "And I… was not the man who could make her happy, and she deserves to be. But you are that man, and I wish you both well."

"Thank you so much." Blazer flew up to encompass both her ex and current boyfriend in a tearful hug. "Both of you."

"Hah." Flambae sighed with satisfaction as the entire team drew up together on the dock to stare out at the smoking, roiling water where both suits were now nothing but vapor and fragments. "Well, I guess you're not a bitch after all." He greeted the arriving Robert.

"It took this much to finally convince you?" Robert rolled his eyes at him. "I only had to lose my armor again a second time!"

"You think Shroud's really dead?" Visi stared out over the ocean into the late afternoon sun. "Or did he have an ejector seat like you did?"

"Drone team, did you have imagery of that event?" Washington queried the tactical net.

"We're doing the instant replay now." they answered. "We've got high-resolution footage of the whole thing – and, that's a negative, Command. Unless he was invisible or going straight down into the water, nobody got out."

"Harbor Patrol, we need you to come in and start a search of the water. Michaels, remount four of your tactical squads in the Suburbans and have them do a walkdown of the shore both north and south of here for at least a mile each way, coordinate with local PD for the rest. If Shroud did get out, then I don't want him going far." Washington ordered. "Hammer Flight, secure from station and return to base. Looks like we don't need any air support today after all."

"Glad to hear it, Command." Hammer One acknowledged as the two fighter planes turned and flew for home. "Nice job down there, guys."

"Maybe he's dead, maybe he's not." Cap nodded. "But either way, he's lost everything he's built up. All of his people are either captured or fled. And nobody in Los Angeles will follow him again, not after he's flopped this hard and wrecked every crime network he touched. Whether dead or fugitive, now he's just an old man with a calculator in his head and an antique gun he can barely shoot."

"Yeah." Visi breathed out in awe. "Holy shit. We won."

"We certainly did." Blazer agreed sunnily, as her and Robert stepped up alongside. "I'm sorry about your suit, though."

"Ehhh, SDN can afford it." Robert tossed off amusedly. "After all, the contract to help me rebuild it specified that the contract wasn't executed until a successful test flight was completed."

"Are you saying that I have to pay for another one?" Blazer pretended to pout, and everybody laughed.

"Well, maybe not right away." Robert conceded with a chuckle. "But hey, it's not like either of us is going anywhere."

Phenomaman nodded to them both and flew off, and both couples each grabbed their loved one and began kissing them in the light of the early sunset, as the rest of the Z-Team cheered and catcalled and the agents all around them traded amused smiles.

"And tonight, the drinks are on me!" a gleeful Punch Up yelled as him and Coupe smiled at each other, and everybody burst into cheers at that.

* * * * *

An elderly man with thin steel-framed glasses and neatly trimmed gray hair and beard unplugged the interface cable from his head and rubbed his weary, aching eyes. Around him in a dingy basement lair lay multiple hastily-assembled computer terminals, servers, and switchboxes.

"Boss?" Toxic's voice came from the cellar stairs.

"Down here." Elliot Connors answered.

"The remote control setup worked, then." Toxic greeted his master. "They thought you were in the mech the whole time."

"And now they'll believe I'm dead. Even the most paranoid of them will believe I'm fleeing and powerless." the unmasked Shroud acknowledged.

"Uh… not to be the bearer of bad news, but kinda aren't we all those things?" Toxic agreed. "I mean, look, you know I'm with you to the end. I was up for lethal injection when you made me part of your escape plan, and that's exactly what I'm going back to if they ever catch me. And Lord knows every other gang in LA is kiiiinda pissed at me right now, and you even worse. So even if I wasn't the kind who'd play straight with you as long as you played straight with me – and you have, and I am – I'd still stick it out, 'cause where the fuck else am I gonna go?" Toxic shrugged. "But that doesn't change facts, and the facts are that we are fucking done. Your escape plan is gonna get us out of town with our asses intact, but that's all we're gonna keep. We've lost everything else."

"On the contrary." Elliot's beaming grin shocked Toxic to his core. "We stand to gain everything."

"Have you fried a circuit, boss?" Toxic asked concernedly. "Because-" He stopped and blinked in realization. "No fuckin' way." he said slowly, his voice awestruck.

"Entirely fuckin' way." Elliot grinned back. "The last piece of intelligence that I needed came in from our networks right less than two hours before the heroes arrived. The plan to do a crash takeover of as many of Los Angeles' crime networks as we could so as to have the broadest access to the information necessary for our ultimate goal came through… and several days ahead of the predicted schedule." He chuckled. "Normally I despise luck, but when it works out for me? I'll take it."

"So we know where it is?" Toxic agreed eagerly.

"We know where it is." Elliot confirmed. "And once we obtain the Astral Pulse then all of our losses to date will be entirely irrelevant. So for now we shall lay low and let the heroes enjoy their victory." Elliot began to laugh evilly. "Because I cannot wait to eventually give them their prize."

* * * * *

Author's Note: And so, the big mecha battle finally happens. Hope it didn't disappoint.

And yes, Shroud's just a goddamned cockroach, isn't he? But at long last his scheme makes sense – it was everything the Feds had analyzed plus a giant push to finding the Astral Pulse again as soon as he could, and he was willing to make everything else expendable towards that one goal.

Kudos to the posters who suggested a way to get Mecha Man in the fight one last time, I hadn't originally thought of the 'let's do a suicide run with the Proto-Pulses' idea but it really worked out for me.

cliffc999 · Saturday at 12:49 PM

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 50

"You're certain?" Special Agent in Charge Davis asked the two people standing in front of her desk that Monday morning. Steve and Courtney had spent the entire remaining weekend writing up their statements and helping officially close out their participation in the case, and now it was time to muster out.

"Yes ma'am." Steve Rogers nodded soberly to her after him and Courtney traded confirming glances. "It was a privilege to work with you, and we're glad that we could help resolve the case as quickly and relatively without cost as we did. But…" He shrugged. "This just isn't what we want to do. Not on a permanent basis."

"I deeply regret to hear that, Captain. Both personally and professionally. But I understand your decision, and our door will always remain open. To either of you." she nodded.

"Thank you." Steve nodded. "We'll keep it in mind."

"I still can't stop wondering if Shroud is actually dead." Courtney fretted. "I mean, that was definitely one big explosion, but-" She shook her head.

"Guys like that? If you haven't found the body or at least a big enough piece of the body, then you can never be sure." Steve agreed.

"Absolutely." ASAC Washington nodded. "Granted, an explosion like that wouldn't leave any traces to find in the first place, so our complete lack of a corpse so far proves nothing. But we're certainly not cancelling the APB or the Interpol Red Notice. Seriously, we found enough bombs at the secondary sites to blow up half of Los Angeles... and plans to do exactly that in some kind of demented terror campaign. The terror alert out for Shroud is never expiring after that. So even if he is still alive, he's still on notice."

"If." Courtney agreed meaningfully.

Nick continued more reassuringly. "That having been said, there hasn't been a whisper of a trace of him all weekend. Or Toxic, who we do know survived the battle and evaded capture."

"And in the distinctly more pleasant category of news, here's what we owe you." SAC Davis withdrew a pair of envelopes from a file folder on her desk and handed them over. "Compliments of the US Treasury, and thank you for your service as government contractors."

"Not that you might not be called on to testify later, but that's for later." Nick said. "For right now, you're free to go."

"Good luck, both of you. With whatever you choose to do." Davis stood to shake their hands.

"Farewell, ma'am." Steve answered for both of them. "And good luck closing out the case."

"Oh, we'll be eating out for months on the busts we've made this weekend." Davis smiled. "And so will everybody else on the follow-ups from this case, whether federal, state, or local. Shroud's crime blitzkrieg over the past several months seems to have sucked more than half the organized super-crime in LA into his orbit… and now it's all imploded along with him. So with the thanks of a grateful nation, well done. For both you and all your friends still at SDN – the honest portions of it, at any rate."

The duo finished their goodbyes and left the SAC's office, to be greeted at the door by the second of the two agents they'd originally met when first approaching the FBI.

"Come on, I'll walk you to the door." SSA Sullivan greeted them.

"Thanks, Tom." Nick greeted him. "My desk is swamped right now. I can't spend a minute away from it that I don't really need to."

"Yeah, been a lot of that going around recently." His fellow agent joked back, and the two now-freelance heroes followed Tom into the elevator.

"Invisigal – Courtney – I want to apologize." he broke the silence as they headed down.

"For what?" Courtney asked him confusedly.

"For the last time we'd worked together, and how it ended." Tom shook his head. "Back then we just took your testimony, threw you a bone for it, and then kicked you right back out the door without even trying to act like we could offer you a hand up." He slumped dejectedly. "I was the evaluating agent who'd decided to write you off as incorrigible, and as recent events have more than proven I was entirely wrong to have believed that." He shook his head. "If I hadn't made a snap judgement then… hadn't let myself get so offended at how you were acting that I didn't pay enough attention to what was really going on underneath… well, the fact is that I did. And that my doing so is why several more years were wasted for you, years that are my fault."

"I really don't think they are." Courtney reassured him after a brief pause. "Because you were right. I was fuckin' hopeless back then. I didn't even begin to trust anyone… least of all myself." Her voice turned soft and sad. "If you'd tried offering me a life-line back then, I'd have thought that it was just you running a con… or else giving me a gift-wrapped invitation to try and con you. And then you'd have been right back at square one anyway, when I took your opportunity and pissed all over it."

Steve laid a reassuring hand on Courtney's shoulder but remained silent as Tom probed. "I don't think so. Seriously, just look at you now. We had to have missed something."

"You're asking me for mature introspection?" Courtney chuffed a laugh. "Really not what I'm famous for. But… I think it only started for me when I did my last job for Shroud. When for the first time in my career I couldn't just grab and run, but was forced to actually stick around and look my victim in the face, to see 'em get hurt and almost die… and know that they hadn't done anything to deserve it. When I finally couldn't pretend to myself anymore that what I was doing was just 'victimless crimes' or 'getting my own back'." She chewed her lip. "But even that realization only got me as far as finally hating how I was living and wanting to do something else. It didn't make me able to actually succeed at doing it. Because even after I quit stealing I still couldn't let myself believe that I might ever not be a worthless fuck-up… not until this guy came along." She cocked a thumb at Steve. "It's just impossible to not trust Steve, even when he's telling you something that you'd never believe coming from anyone else."

"Sounds like you should maybe consider a career as a counselor, Captain, not as an agent." Tom joked to him.

"I'm almost beginning to wonder." Steve chuckled. "But if you're asking for my opinion, Courtney, I think that even with everything I or anyone else could do, in the end it ultimately still had to come from inside you - and it did." He shrugged. "Maybe it didn't happen earlier because you just weren't ready until recently. Maybe these things take an irreducible amount of time, no matter how hard people try to do it faster. I'm not sure. But I am sure that the main credit belongs to you and not me. And that even if I'd never come here you'd still have gotten there on your own. Possibly not quite as quickly or as easily, but you'd have gotten there."

"Well, I'm just glad that I never had to find out." Courtney answered Steve lovingly.

"If either of you ever needs a friend on the force, you've got my number." Tom shook both their hands as they stepped out into the lobby. "And good luck to both of you – in whatever you choose to do." He quirked a smile. "As long as it's legal, that is."

"Goes without saying." Steve smiled back. "Stay safe, Tom."

Steve and Courtney stepped out of the Federal building in downtown LA and breathed in the bright morning air. "So, where do we go first?" Courtney asked.

"The bank, to cash these paychecks." Steve decided. "And then I think we should head to a car dealer and start looking at motorcycles."

* * * * *

Courtney laughed and deliberately rubbed the cotton candy on the tip of Steve's nose as retaliation for how he'd just dabbed some on hers. "You do know that 'I'm going to Disney Land' is a meme, right?"

"But we had free tickets!" Steve protested piously. "We couldn't just waste them!"

"I don't know what SDN's head office was thinking, emailing those comp passes to everybody involved in the Shroud case 'as thanks for their efforts'. As if that's going to make me any less likely to sue them." Courtney grabbed a napkin from her pocket and wiped the cotton candy off her nose and then Steve's as they both walked along through the lunchtime crowd at the famous theme park in Anaheim. "Still, doesn't mean I'm not going to take the free stuff and run."

"I thought you were giving that kind of thing up." Steve observed with a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth tone of voice.

Courtney burst out laughing, immediately followed by Steve's more gentle chuckling. "But at least I waited until the rightful owner gave it to me this time, so, progress!"

"What do you want to do first?" Steve asked her as they strolled away from the concession stand and deeper into the park.

"Space Mountain." Courtney decided immediately. "I've heard about it my whole life, and now I finally have a chance to see it."

"You've never been here before? It's been right down the road from you the entire time." Steve asked curiously.

"Well, obviously the gene donors would never bother taking me." Courtney sighed. "As for why not come here myself later?" She looked up and around at the entire innocent, cheerful venue. "Just… didn't seem to be any point, I guess. Not if I was just by myself."

"Well, that's certainly not a problem for you today." Steve smiled down at her. "And… I'd like it to stay that way. For a very long time."

"I'd like that too." Courtney replied softly, and leaned further into Steve's arm as it came up around over her shoulders as they got into line at the attraction.

* * * * *

Courtney and Steve stood in the early evening twilight staring disgustedly at the motorcycle that had stubbornly refused to start no matter how much Steve had fiddled with the engine. "Fuckin' seriously?" she swore. "We just bought this thing!"

"Oh, the dealer's definitely paying for a warranty repair." Steve agreed firmly as he pulled out his smartphone to call for a tow truck and an Uber. "Okay, our ride should be here soon."

"Eh, it was still a great day even with the annoyance." Courtney agreed. Soon enough the tow truck company came and loaded up their motorcycle for its trip back to the car dealer, and Courtney and Steve got into the back of the Uber that arrived for them shortly afterwards.

"Where we going?" the driver asked them.

"SDN Torrance branch." Steve answered.

"Need to pick up your, uh, thingy, from Royd?" Courtney asked him as the car set into motion.

"Yeah, Robert and him couldn't stop begging me for a chance to study it after they saw it, uh, stop that thing at the docks." Steve answered vaguely as they both glanced at the driver. "And I needed a place to store it securely while we went out anyway, so why not?"

"And we can catch a ride on from there, no problem." Courtney agreed. "Hey, isn't Robert's housewarming party later tonight?"

"It is." Steve acknowledged. "I helped chip in for a new couch, Mandy will be bringing it. What are you getting him?'

"Bluetooth speakers." She pulled out a small package from her amusement park swag bag. "Saw 'em in the gift shop, thought he'd like some for his tunes."

Steve looked up and noted a peculiarity about their route. "Excuse me, why are we taking the coast road?" he leaned forward to ask the driver politely. "It's a little out of the way."

"Traffic alert says the stoplights are blinking red all down 5th Street, so if I took the direct route there we'd be stuck in stop-and-go for longer than if we just detoured around." The driver answered reasonably, as he held up his smartphone so Steve could see the flash notice on his traffic app. "Traffic computer must have blown a fuse or something."

"Ah. Sorry." Steve apologized.

The driver nodded back matter-of-factly. "Nah, it's good when people ask questions. Most accidents happen when people aren't alert."

"I guess we're not the only ones having technical problems today." Courtney snarked.

"I guess not." Steve answered philosophically. "But if minor stuff like this is the worst that's going on for us, then we're still having a pretty good day."

"No kidding." Courtney agreed enthusiastically. "It is so nice to finally be out of crisis mode for a whi-"

And then, as if tempting fate, a brilliant blue flash from the bridge windows of a freighter moored adjacent to the road that they were driving down suddenly brought every car on the road to a halt. The area went dark for several hundred yards around as all the street lights flared out and all the nearby buildings went dark.

"What the hell?" their Uber driver cursed as he barely stood on his brakes in time to avoid hitting the car in front.

"Electromagnetic pulse." Steve noted crisply as he took in the situation. "Courtney, is your phone dead?"

"Fried." she said, looking at the blank screen. "Yours?"

"Likewise." Steve said, and the driver also held up his blank and dead smartphone.

"So, uh, what now?" their driver asked. "And what the hell even happened? I thought EMPs only came from, like, nuclear bombs and shit."

"Somebody is apparently doing reckless experiments with super-technology on board that ship." Steve noted, as he dug into his wallet for a hundred-dollar bill. "And while I've no doubt the authorities will get here soon enough, they don't know exactly where in this whole area the trouble is centered while we do. So before somebody over there gets away…" Steve trailed off.

"I guess we're back on the clock." Courtney agreed ruefully as Steve paid the driver. "Thanks for the ride."

"What, you guys cops or something?" their confused driver asked them as they both left the car.

"Or something." Steve agreed. "Stay safe."

The two heroes trotted swiftly over to the pier, taking care to stay out of easy view of anyone onboard the ship. Cap and Visi set their swag bags carefully down out of the way and cased the situation.

"I haven't heard any engine noises and we haven't seen anyone get off, so unless they're paddling a canoe they're still on that ship." Cap noted. "But whoever they are they have to know that they just attracted a lot of attention, so they'll be as nervous as a cat up a tree."

"I scout ahead?" Visi asked.

"Yes, but first we both get on that ship. You trigger something, I can't support you from in here."

"So we both walk all the way across that open gangplank?" Visi shook her head. "Only one of us turns invisible."

"So we don't use the gangplank." Cap shook his head. "Climb on."

Visi looked down incredulously from where she was perched piggy-back on Cap's shoulders as her boyfriend literally ran up the mooring line tying the freighter's bow to the shore, balancing on it as easily as if it were a level sidewalk. "This is so cool." she whispered.

"Well, they say work that you love isn't really work at all." Cap agreed amusedly as they crept onto the silent forecastle. "Sealed." he whispered as they tried the nearest hatch on the forward superstructure.

"Bad guy's lab is up at the top of the rear tower thingy anyway." Visi nodded. "Okay, I don't see anybody moving topside so we can try creeping a little closer down the side there."

"Cargo hold's open, we can look down from here." Cap agreed, and a minute later they both whistled softly as they peered down into the blackened expanse.

"Are those laser turrets?" Visi whispered incredulously at the rows of deactivated weapons mounts spaced evenly around the inside of the cargo hold, mounted high up on the walls where they'd turn the entire hold into a killing floor.

"Automated sentry guns for interior security." Cap noted. "Looks like their fire control's been fried by the EMP as well. This isn't a normal ship, it's like a HYDRA laboratory that floats or something."

"If it's a bad guy lair, then where's the bad guys?" Visi looked at Cap alarmedly.

"Either waiting to ambush us, or else already taken out by something else on this ship even more dangerous than they were." Cap said worriedly. "This is the point at which it's usually best to call for backup."

"Except our phones are bricked." Visi reminded him. "And if we go back ashore, whatever or whoever this is gets away scott free."

"Marine radio." Cap decided. "The emergency backup gear will probably be old-fashioned enough it didn't have microchips to fry – and more importantly, it would have been stored while turned off and also run on batteries. So all we'd need to do is turn one on again and voila, we can call the Coast Guard."

"Where would they keep 'em?" Visi asked.

"If this were a Navy ship I'd know where the survival kits are supposed to be, but there's no guarantees a civilian vessel would be equally as thorough about precautions." Cap nodded. "Only place that we could find one for sure would be the radio room… which is right up there alongside the bridge." He nodded at the superstructure tower the EMP flare had originally come from.

"Now I go invisible and scout ahead." Visi insisted firmly.

"I could try climbing up the outside of the superstructure and in through the bridge windows." Cap suggested.

"Then you're a sitting duck for any sniper sitting anywhere within half a mile of this place." Visi shook her head.

"No backup, blacked-out ship, and now we're splitting the party." Cap sighed. "This deal is getting worse all the time."

"Oh, if only we could leave a garrison here." Visi completed the Star Wars meme.

Cap shrugged helplessly and they both crept into the bottom level of the superstructure.

"Emergency generator for the bridge." Cap noted the clearly marked stencils on one nearby hatch. "Let's see if I can restart it." Moving cautiously and keeping a lookout all around the duo entered the auxiliary engineering space and after a minute of work, Cap managed to get the power back on. Dim emergency lighting flickered into place all through the superstructure.

"Okay, now there'll be power for the main radios as well – assuming any of that gear survived." Cap said.

"Yeah, but if any bad guys are still conscious after that boom now they'll know-" Visi shrugged. "Still, we couldn't not do it, we needed the lights just to see where we're going."

"Hopefully they'll think one of their own guys did it." Cap said. "I'll wait here to ambush whatever damage control crew they send, you head up there and scout it out. If there's few enough we can take them-"

"-I step back and enjoy watching my boyfriend punch more bad guys." Visi grinned. "But if the odds suck too hard, then we do fall back."

Visi kissed Cap for luck and then went transparent, as she headed up the nearby stairs towards the upper superstructure. Cap took up an ambush position across the hall from the generator room and waited.

A distant sound of footsteps along the metal deckplates made him tense. Someone was coming-

A single disreputable looking goon with a thin brown crewcut and dressed in stained blue coveralls came fumbling his way down the passage, mumbling indistinctly to himself under his breath. The man stopped in apparent confusion at the generator room door already being open, then shrugged and stepped inside. Cap stealthily stepped forward to take his clear shot at the man's unguarded back-

-and at the last second the man turned around and flicked his hand directly at Cap's face, spattering him with searing caustic drops he'd somehow conjured out of nowhere. Cap's blink reflex was just barely quick enough to save his vision, but even so enough of the searing acid had gotten past his eyelids to leave him half-blinded and trying to squint painfully through floods of tears. A super-strong kick caught the temporarily defenseless super-soldier square in the chest and ragdolled him right back out the door and across the hall to land flat on his back in the opposite compartment.

"Surprise!" Cap heard Toxic's voice gloating cheerfully. "Didn't expect me to hit so hard, didja? But I've had an upgrade since the last time we met. I'm more juiced than I've ever been!" Toxic laughed triumphantly. "And I'm not the only one!"

Several decks above Visi stopped as she thought she just barely heard faint noises from below, and then resumed her movement after a careful pause to look-and-listen. The corridors of the ship were disturbingly empty – whatever supervillain crew had been using this place for a lab site had apparently already evacuated. Which was absurd, as her and Steve would have seen them leave, unless they were all hiding out belowdecks-

After a careful pause to renew her invisibility Visi came out onto the bridge level and began a swift yet thorough sweep of the hallways. Nothing visible, no movement, no suspicious sounds- and there was the armored steel hatch clearly labelled 'Radio Room'…

Below decks, the blinded Cap hurriedly kipped-up to his feet and charged forward to meet Toxic's rush. Ignoring where he thought the acid villain might be, he instead ran to grasp where he remembered the edge of the compartment's open hatch had been and with his full strength he slammed it shut as hard as he could. As Cap had hoped, the villain's pause to gloat had meant the was still only in the process of entering the room despite the time Cap had needed to recover, and so the swinging steel hatch slammed directly into Toxic's face with Cap's full strength.

"Mmmph!" the acid villain screamed in rage as he was sent reeling back into the hallway and chipped several teeth. The blinded Cap knew he'd have only a moment before Toxic resumed his rush, and fighting an opponent at least as strong as himself and who had flesh-melting acid skin was a bad enough idea even when you could see. But if he could-

A vigorous leap brought Cap's hands level with the ceiling, and his rapidly flailing arms managed to find the overhead pipe he'd been hoping to grasp. Rapidly sliding his other hand down the pipe until his fingertips found the protrusion he'd been hoping for, Cap firmly grasped one of the nozzles of the overhead sprinkler system and snapped it right off the firemain pipe with his full strength. The downpouring water cleared Cap's vision enough for him to see that Toxic had just re-entered the room, and rather than kick at the villain the dangling Cap instead swung forward from where he hung on the piping to clasp both ankles around Toxic's neck and pull the villain sprawling forward into the compartment to be flung heavily into the far wall.

Cap dropped down, twisting nimbly in mid-air to face off against Toxic as the villain regained his feet, and the acid villain's face twisted in alarm as he realized that not only was he trapped in a small compartment with Cap between him and the door, but the water flooding down from the broken sprinkler system was washing away enough of his acid coating to neutralize his advantage. And just as his plight really began to sink in, Cap leapt furiously to the attack without a further word.

With clenched fist raised, Visi rounded the corner of the hatch and stepped into the radio room. Several lights dimly flickered on nearby panels, the emergency generator having restored power to some of the systems. She noted in passing that the gear was indeed mostly antiquated models as Cap had anticipated, with the oldest components dating from the analog era and thus very likely to still be functioning now that power had been restored after the EMP. After a final look around to make sure nobody was lurking in ambush, she reached out to switch on the radio-

-and was knocked to the floor, barely conscious, by the electrical shock trap that had already been wired into the panel.

"Ungggh!" Toxic grunted in pain as his brawling punch was swiftly parried. Cap trapped Toxic's punching arm by twisting it up in his own and then lifted Toxic bodily off his feet to literally bounce him off the ceiling and leave him prone on the floor. Toxic gritted and concentrated on activating his flight powers, rocketing right up off the floor to tackle Cap into the bulkhead, then throwing a furious flurry of punches into his momentarily stunned opponent.

Toxic crumpled over in pain when Cap's furious heel stomp almost broke his foot, and then Cap used the momentary opening to swing Toxic around into a furious bear hug from behind and bore down with his full strength. Toxic screamed in rage and took off flying again, starting to slam the hero bodily off the walls and ceiling as he left Cap with absolutely no leverage to control Toxic's movements anymore now that his feet were off the ground.

Grunting at the impact as Toxic furiously flung himself backwards against the wall again and again, Cap gritted his teeth at the watered-down acid stinging his forearms and chest through his slowly dissolving leather jacket and crushed the villain's ribcage as hard as he could, trying to compress his chest and cut off Toxic's breath.

"You don't know to rig an EMP like that. If you're here, Shroud's here!" Cap spat grimly.

"No duh, steroid brain!" Toxic sneered back in-between gasps for air. "And you won't believe- what he's got planned- for that backstabbing little bitch-"

Expertly timing his move, Cap bent backwards and deliberately went along with Toxic's motion just as the villain tried to slam them both back up against the wall yet again. Flipping Toxic up and over him in a devastating reverse suplex, Cap had the acid villain turned upside down and slammed back into the steel bulkhead with the both the full force of Cap's muscles and his own momentum. Stunned, Toxic posed no effective resistance as Cap straightened up and swung Toxic back around like cracking a whip to dash the villain's skull against the steel deckplates. Cap then hauled him up by the throat and slammed his back against the bulkhead while his other hand wound up for the most desperate haymaker he'd ever thrown, and the punch took Toxic square in the head and solidly compressed the villain's already multiply-battered skull between Cap's indomitable fist and the hull of the ship. Thoroughly concussed, with an almost certain skull fracture, and extremely unconscious, Toxic fell as limply to the ground as a spilled sack of rice.

The electrical lights all flickered as a distant cry of pain sounded through the chip. "Courtney!" Cap cried in alarm, and pausing only long enough to pull the armored compartment hatch shut from the outside and jam the handle of a fire axe taken off a nearby wall mounting through the hatch wheel to jam it shut and trap Toxic in the improvised steel cell, Cap frantically ran for the stairway and up the decks to the bridge.

Visi regained alertness just in time to see Shroud plucking her inhaler out of her jacket pocket. Still dazed from the electric shock, her attempt to punch him was only met by an effortless jab from the cattle prod Shroud held in his other hand which sent her right back down to the radio room deckplates, teeth helplessly chattering.

"Did you truly delude yourself that you could escape my vengeance, Courtney Doe?" Shroud mocked her. "Or that your knight in shining armor would ride to your rescue yet again? You are a petty parasite, forever propped up only by the effort of others. You lie and you steal and you take, but you never produce. You never give."

His only reply was Courtney's weakly upthrust middle finger.

"You will not die just yet." Shroud mocked the defenseless woman coolly, as he withdrew the antique revolver from within his long jacket. "First you will live just long enough to know that-" A slight beeping from Shroud's pocket interrupted him, and he swiftly withdrew a remote control just long enough to raise an eyebrow at the readout. "Ah, Toxic has been defeated, and now he rushes to your rescue."

"If you start running… maybe you can live long enough to jump out the window before he catches you." Courtney grinned defiantly up at him from the floor.

"That will not be necessary." Shroud mocked her, entirely unconcerned. "Three… two… one…"

Courtney's defiant expression fell away to horror as the sound of several explosive charges detonating echoed thunderously from the nearby stairwell.

"Zero." Shroud finished icily. "I did underestimate him before, several times, but it is of no matter. My trap today was perfectly planned. Perfectly baited. And perfectly executed. And it made sure to incorporate redundancies, one of which the Captain has just encountered." Shroud chuckled. "I hate you both, you know. Even more than Mecha Man now. Him for having been the catalyst for all my defeats, and you for having unaccountably been the worthless whore that he was inexplicably besotted with and the only reason he stayed here at all! But now you will die helpless and alone, with the last thought echoing in your otherwise empty mind that the man you love has also done the same." Shroud chuckled. "I calculate that the Captain will still have survived that explosion. He will still be heroically dragging himself up those stairs, inch by painful inch, desperate to save you in time."

Courtney was kicked back down to the deckplates as she unsteadily tried to rise again, and then her eyes opened wide in horror as Shroud dropped an unpinned smoke grenade on the deck directly adjacent to her.

"And he will never arrive. I will make certain of that. Just as you will certainly die here, choking on your own pathetic weakness. Good-bye, Courtney. We will not speak again."

Gasping and choking, Courtney curled up on the floor in despair as she felt the passages in her lungs spasm shut. Her vision began to dim as she knew, she just knew that the minute or two of residual oxygen in her blood would be the last breaths she ever drew, just as Shroud would go back downstairs and finish off the weakened Steve, because even he would barely be able to move after walking directly into that many land mines-

Her palm slammed flat on the floor as she pushed herself upright. Get up, Courtney. Get on your fucking feet! Because if you can't save Steve… then you can damned well avenge him!

Forcing back her panic and growing unconsciousness on sheer willpower, Courtney frantically looked around the compartment. Know where the bad guys are… know the terrain…

Hatch closed. Won't have enough strength or time to finish opening it. Barely a minute of oxygen left. Need to restart my breathing- but the compartment's full of smoke- and where there's smoke there's fire-

The saying echoed incongruously through Courtney's head, leaving her blinking at the irrelevancy of it – before her eyes opened in realization. Focusing her gaze with fanatic determination on a little orange-painted box hanging on the compartment wall, she shakily stepped towards it, desperately marshalling all her failing strength and fading vision to hopefully reach it before- but she was already starting to black out-

Cap shakily regained consciousness, still bleeding from his nose and one ear from the force of the concussive blast he'd just taken. Shroud had left multiple IEDs taped in strategic locations on the stairwell walls and then covered up with duct tape and gray spray paint, almost entirely invisible in the dimly lit gloom until it was too late. The motion-sensitive proximity fuse discreetly glued to the overhead had left no tripwire or trigger that he could have seen, and while his superhuman resilience had gotten him through a confined-space explosion that would have turned an unenhanced person into a dying sack of flesh pulp without even any broken bones, he was still heavily concussed, badly bruised over most of his body, and looking at hours of recuperative time even with his regeneration before he'd be in fighting shape again.

And he didn't have minutes, let alone hours. Shroud stood gloating at him safely out of reach at the top of the stairway, the heavy revolver in his hand levelled directly at him.

"Before I kill you, there's one thing I'd like to tell you." Shroud chuckled. "She's going to die first, choking and suffocating, and the very last thought that echoes thorough her despairing mind will be that you failed to reach her in time."

"Swear to God… I will end you." Steve slurred half-consciously. "I've met Nazis… I hated less than you…"

"The Nazis." Shroud scoffed. "That delusional madman only dreamed of conquering the world. I will succeed at doing so."

"You… and half a million other idiots… all the same. And you all… never getting close." Steve slowly, painfully, dragged himself facedown up another step.

"You never comprehended my true plan." Shroud scoffed. "Controlling the crime of Los Angeles? Why would I care only about a petty sandbox? It was a means to an end, nothing more." Shroud gloated. "This end." He proudly tapped the brilliantly glowing capsule inset into in the interface socket on the side of his head with one finger. "Even with the lesser pulse reactor capsules I could construct, my predictive technology still granted me intelligence greater than any other human who had ever lived. But with the true Astral Pulse, I see everything. It's all there. Every permutation, every outcome. I could see exactly how to manipulate you and her into this trap, every faultless step occurring exactly according to my design. And I can do the same to Robert, and I will. And after all those who have wronged me have suffered, I can go on to do the same to the world."

"So shoot me then." Steve defiantly gasped, still barely able to raise up to one knee. "Use up all the bullets you got left. I'll still have enough gas left in the tank… to take you with me."

"Your beloved is dead now." Shroud's words chilled Steve's blood. "Her maximum possible survival window has just expired." He levelled the revolver at Steve's face. "One bullet for you. The last one for Robert. Good-bye, Captain Amer-"

And the words died in Shroud's throat with a helpless gasp as a set of invisible fingers plucked the Astral Pulse directly out of his cranial socket, while Courtney's other hand rapidly yanked Shroud's arm upwards and twisted his wrist enough to make him drop the gun.

With a contemptuous shove to Shroud's back the materializing Courtney sent the elderly man, still mentally paralyzed from his sudden loss of nigh-omniscience, sprawling face-first down the stairs to land almost nose-to-nose with Steve. The villain and the super-soldier both looked up to see a triumphant Courtney standing on top of the stairs, the blue-gleaming Astral Pulse held high in one hand… and the plastic bag of a maritime-issue Emergency Escape Breathing Device, a self-contained head-sized sack attached to a fifteen-minute oxygen capsule, firmly pulled over her head.

Steve began to helplessly chuckle as he took in the entire situation, and then he grinned weakly up at Courtney. "…I had 'em on the ropes."

And for a long minute, the stairwell was filled with nothing but tearful embraces and laughter.

* * * * *

"You're sure you don't need to go to the hospital?" SSA Sullivan asked Cap as the paramedics finished cleaning out his various cuts and scrapes and tut-tutting at the several chemical burns spotting his hands and arms. Behind them, the despondent Elliot Connors slumped nigh-catatonically in his restraints as he was loaded, unresisting, into the back of a police vehicle. Toxic's still-comatose body was being loaded into the back of an ambulance, surrounded by heavily-armed agents, as the dockside parking lot was positively full of blinking lights and emergency vehicles.

"Eh, I'll walk it off." Steve waved his concerns away. "By this time tomorrow you won't even see any marks."

"Give it up, Tom." Courtney said affectionately. "We've still got a housewarming party to get to tonight, and no way are we missing it."

"One thing I can't figure. How the hell did Shroud's prediction tech blow the trap with Courtney so badly?" the agent asked.

"The thing about equations is, if you don't have any numbers to plug in then even the best calculator in the world can't get you any answers." Steve said. "Shroud's 'perfect plan' could take into account every factor he knew or could even logically guess at – but apparently he didn't know the slightest thing about ships or sailing, or else he'd have accounted for the fact that every seagoing vessel stashes emergency breathing gear in almost every critical compartment. It's the only way the crew can get out of confined spaces like that in case of a fire without dying of smoke inhalation. What I don't get is how Courtney knew about it. I got taught basic shipboard damage control in SHIELD training, but she was never in the Navy or anything like it."

"Remember that battleship movie I made you watch a couple nights ago?" Courtney giggled. "You spent half the movie ranting about how unrealistic the procedures were and how the plot would never have worked on a real ship. And at the last minute I remembered what you'd said then about oxygen gear."

"Oh no." Steve moaned as he despairingly facepalmed. "Are you saying that letting you torture me with that thing is ultimately what saved my life? I am never getting control of the TV remote back, am I?"

"Never." Courtney gloated viciously, and everybody laughed.

"Well, that closes the case." SSA Sullivan shook his head. "Talk about a standout entry for America's Dumbest Criminals. That guy had everything he'd been going after already in the palm of his hand and a free and clear escape route, but instead he does this. If he hadn't deliberately stuck around to try and personally get back at you and the others, nobody would ever have caught up to him."

"Tolkien said it best." Steve shrugged. "Evil will oft evil mar."

"Ain't that the truth. Well… thanks again. Captain." He chuckled. "Oh, and it occurs to me that since you officially signed out of government employ this morning and were private citizens just now, you two are eligible for the reward that was posted yesterday for Shroud's capture."

"Wait, you'd posted like a million dollars for him." Courtney blinked. "He was in Ten Most Wanted territory!"

"Two million. And you can come by the office tomorrow to pick up the check. Again." Tom chuckled.

"I pick the motorcycle this time." Courtney immediately insisted.

"That's entirely fair. You caught the bad guy." Steve agreed.

"Can I give you guys a ride anywhere?" Tom asked as they stood up to leave.

"Robert's apartment." Steve said. "We're late for the party. Oh, and if you want to come, I think they'd be glad to have you."

"Thanks, but I'm going to be working late tonight." Tom turned them down cheerfully as he turned to look at where Shroud's prisoner transport had recently left the lot. "But thanks for the collar. Nick's gonna flip when he hears he missed this."

After a short ride the agent cheerfully bade the disheveled pair of heroes farewell, and they headed up the stairs to Robert's apartment.

"Sorry we're late." Steve greeted the room full of partygoers as they all turned to look in shock at the battered and scraped duo.

"Shroud lured us into a deathtrap on the way here, we had to hero our way out of it." Courtney tossed off unconcernedly. "Y'know, the usual."

"You two simply can't stay out of trouble for a minute, can you?" Blazer fussed at them. "You're sure you're all right?"

"We're fine." Steve assured her. "And Shroud and Toxic are on their way back to prison… and this time, neither of them is ever going to be leaving. FBI's hauling them off right now."

"You have got to give me the whole story." Robert greeted them both enthusiastically. "But we can do that later. For right now, come in and sit down before you fall down."

"Why didn't you call us?" Flambae broke in. "You tried to tackle him all by yourselves? Idiots!" he cursed them affectionately.

"That was the first thing we thought of, but he jammed our comms." Courtney said. "Really, it wasn't a bad trap. Shroud put a lot of effort into it."

"Which is why you will hurt yourselves laughing when you hear how he fucked it up at the end." Steve broke in cheerfully. "Seriously, it was the biggest pratfall I'd ever seen in my life. He was so busy focusing on me he drastically underestimated Courtney, and she left him not knowing which way was up."

"Then congratulations." Chase greeted Courtney warmly, as she blushed. "And since there's no fool like an old fool, let me take this opportunity to publicly admit that when it came to you, I didn't know what the fuck I was talkin' about." He shook Courtney's hand warmly. "You did good. I'm happy for you." He looked around at the Z-Team. "God help me, I'm even startin' to think you dipshits might not be entirely worthless." he groused. "It's senile dementia finally catchin' up to me, I'm sure."

"So, I'm assuming you lost my housewarming gift in this deathtrap." Robert tried to joke.

"Yeah, the EMP he used trashed the speakers I was going to get you." Courtney smiled as she withdrew her hand from her jacket pocket. "But I still managed to snag a little knickknack for you as a replacement. I hope you don't mind."

Robert stared down in awe at the blue-glowing Astral Pulse sitting on Courtney's palm. "Holy shit. How did you find it?"

"Shroud found it." Steve answered for her. "Turns out his whole 'take over the crime in LA' plan was just to get himself enough contacts and resources to turn the whole town upside down searching for it. Apparently he turned up the lead he needed right before the big raid we did – that's why he put so much effort into faking his death and pulling out. Everything else was expendable."

"And after he'd almost won everything, then the dumbass fucked up and delivered it right to us." Courtney laughed as Robert held up the Pulse and stared at it wonderingly.

"Now I really am going to have to pay for a new suit." Blazer tried to joke.

"Yeah." Chase agreed, his face melancholy. "I guess Mecha Man really does ride again in the end."

Robert stared resolutely down at the Astral Pulse… and then turned and tossed it to a surprised Royd, who barely managed to snag it out of the air by reflex. "Maybe later. But for right now, I've got a different idea." He looked up at the whole assembly. "When Shroud had me captive, I taunted him with having been such a dumbass that the only thing he could think of to do with the Astral Pulse was obsess on it as a singular tool of petty revenge instead of taking his design and mass-producing it to help solve the energy crisis or other things."

"I remember." Coupe nodded quietly. "Really, you were quite vivid in your wording."

"So I'd be kinda a hypocrite if I just went back to doing the same thing myself." Robert looked at Royd. "Our Proto-Pulse experiments had already managed to solve every gearhead problem regarding the Pulse's assembly. The only thing we were never able to crack - that we were never going to crack – was the one missing key insight on the science genius end." He smiled at Royd. "But now that we've got the original to work with, you think that we can put that on your workbench and reverse-engineer it to finally solve the last piece of the puzzle?"

Royd grinned back wildly. "I tink that I really want us to try."

"Robert?" Chase looked at him wonderingly. "You really giving it up?"

"No." he shook his head. "But I am willing to put it on hold while we finish the more important part first. That's not a sacrifice, that's just patience." He drew Chase into a reassuring hug. "Two generations of Mecha Men died in that suit. I know you were always terrified that I'd be the third – that you never wanted me to climb back into that thing in the first place. And now that I'm not alone anymore, I finally understand why. So maybe I'll live in that suit again later on, or maybe not. But even if I do then I'm going to live in it, not die in it."

Everybody pretended to ignore Chase sniffling in joy as he hugged his unofficial nephew tightly

"And that's what you'll be doing tomorrow." Blazer gently insisted as she drew Robert into her embrace away from Chase's. "Because for tonight… I really want to dance."

"Hell yeah!" Prism cheered. "I brought the tunes, so let's put that shit up!"

Everybody gleefully hit the improvised dance floor as Prism queued up a song on her playlist and the music started.

I wake up exhausted, even in the morning
Like I'm made out of decaf, I'm barely running
Oh, and I hate parties
It's just too many bodies
I don't like small talk, I'm always leaving early

Steve and Courtney fell into a world of their own as all the other couples at the party did likewise, and even the singles cheerfully paired off to share a dance. Their eyes met as the next chorus spoke directly to their hearts.

Then I met you and my eyes changed
And now you're in my eye range, I'm gunning for you
You changed my heart in a big way
Now every day's a celebration and I wanna say

When you're around, it's already alright
Already alright, like a radio
I'm tuning into you
(I'm tuning into you)
You're turning me on
(You're turning me on)

* * * * *

Author's Note: In the draft version, Steve saved Courtney in the end. But now that the story's fully evolving, it worked out so much better when I did it the other way around. Steve's been coming in clutch for everyone throughout the whole story, so now she finally gets to be the one who comes in clutch for him. (Thanos) Perfectly balanced, as all things must be.

Yes, the Avengers quote is deliberate. Courtney didn't even get it from Steve, that never came up in conversation. She just thought it anyway. Truly some things are timeless even across alternate timelines.

You can of course see how Shroud baited them into the trap with the free tickets and the traffic hacking and all. (Also, Toxic had poured sugar in their gas tank). He had the Astral Pulse running at full power through the whole sequence, he could predict them perfectly. Right up until the part where he got his ass kicked by his own tunnel vision and ignorance, just like Shroud always does.

And also because your author actually did use to be in the Navy and was pleased as punch that his knowledge of obscure damage control procedures finally had a practical use for the first time in decades. Because the EEBD is indeed a legitimate piece of gear that military ships ubiquitously have laying around in wall boxes practically everywhere. Not sure if civilian ships do IRL, never been on one, but for purposes of this story they do.

And so Robert finally gets the Astral Pulse back… but only after he doesn't need it anymore to be complete. So while he will rebuild the suit eventually, he'll get the important stuff taken care of first.

Chase ends up not getting his big hero moment, because when you introduce big changes to a narrative's setup you pay the price of not being able to perfectly reproduce all the stations of canon. But honestly? He doesn't need to kill himself proving that he's a hero in this fanfic, anymore than my Courtney needed to catch a bullet to prove herself. They've already proven themselves, so I'll just let them be happy instead. Chase lives to see Robert let go of his self-destructive obsession and find happiness and a new life without even having to abandon his old legacy as the price of that, as well as finally find acceptance in himself and receive closure for his old guilts, and that will make him happier than a dozen magic amulets. So the tragic last ride of Track Star, while epic, is also not necessary here and so I gladly sidestep it.

The song at the end is 'Radio' by Bershy, which is indeed the song that plays in the game at Robert's housewarming party. So I pay homage to the game by using it here.

And here we are. The big bad is finally defeated and the day is saved. All that's left now is to find out which sunset our heroes will ride off into. Should be only a couple more chapters and we'll be done.

cliffc999 · Saturday at 8:43 PM

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 64

"My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work!" Courtney quoted Sherlock Holmes amusedly.

"I'm fine." Steve protested. "Really."

"I've seen you fidget less while gearing up for full-scale assault missions against giant robots." Courtney retorted as she leaned back in the conference room chair at SDN. "We've been on vacation for barely two weeks and already your knuckles are starting to itch."

"Now you're making me sound like Punch Up." Steve eye-rolled gently.

"Who's sounding like Punch Up?" Blazer asked as she entered the room, trailed by the attorney she'd recommended to Courtney over a week ago and who had been willing to represent her on a contingent-fee basis.

"So, how's it looking?" Courtney asked him.

"If you wanted a settlement from SDN's corporate headquarters, you could easily get it today." Mr. Payne, one of the most feared litigators in the entire Los Angeles area, nodded at her. "But as I recall your instructions, you did not."

"Crucify 'em with dull nails, then skin and salt the hide." Courtney confirmed viciously.

"Ah, I do so love a client who understands." Mr. Payne chuckled. "However, I am legally required to submit their written settlement offer to you before you reject it, so here you are." He handled over several neatly printed sheets, as well as an itemized list of bullet points summarizing the offer in plain English clipped to the front on a Post-It note.

"Hmph." Steve raised an eyebrow. "The last time I saw that many zeroes on a check, it was paying for a new fighter plane."

Courtney's lip curled in scorn. "Oh, look at this. Here they're offering a full confession of responsibility, but at the end of the list they sneak in a non-disclosure agreement that means I can't tell anyone they so much as admitted to double-parking a company car without forfeiting every dime they offered me."

"That's typical." Blazer frowned. "Hollywood has been burying its scandals under money piles for decades."

"Indeed." Mr. Payne nodded. "To almost any sufficiently large institution, the money they lose paying off a disgruntled plaintiff is far outweighed by the revenue they do not lose from an unfavorable verdict in the court of public opinion."

"Well, they're certainly not getting any cooperation from me in that regard." Courtney said. "So tell them we'll-"

"Boss?" Malevola stuck her head in the door, looking worried. "We have a situation."

"What's wrong?" Blazer asked.

"A strange sorceress just portaled right into the middle of the cafeteria during lunch hour." Malevola looked soberly at Captain Rogers. "And she says she wants to see him."

Barely two minutes later everyone was downstairs and facing off against the sorceress in question. She was a middle-aged woman, shaved completely bald, and dressed in a rich yellow robe with a black belt and wearing an elaborate filigree amulet containing a glowing green gem.

"Captain Rogers." she greeted him. "I am very glad to have finally found you."

"Have we met?" Steve asked her seriously.

"No." she shook her head. "But we do share a homeworld." Everyone there took a deep breath in shock, and Courtney clung desperately to Steve's arm. "I am the Ancient One of Kamar-Taj. I am one of the foremost mages of Earth; the Earth that we were both born on. And I have come to take you home."

"Fury had that kind of favor to draw upon?" Steve asked dully. "Or are you a friend of Thor?"

"The Director of SHIELD has very little idea that I even exist, and I would ask your future cooperation in keeping it that way." the Ancient One answered. "And while I am slightly acquainted with the Odinson, it is not at his behest that I have come."

"How do we even know you're for real?" Courtney challenged her. "I mean, yeah, you're talking about stuff from Steve's birth world… but even I know the references you're making, because he's told me and other people about them here."

"A valid question, Miss Doe." Courtney turned paler at the Ancient One's casual revelation of her name. "And as tokens of my sincerity, I stopped to gather several things before I came here."

Her one hand dipped inside her robe and came out with an incongruously mundane brown paper bag, identical in appearance to any ordinary person's lunch. Steve took the bag and upended it on a nearby table, and a set of dog tags and a metallic disc less than a foot wide with a glowing blue circular ring in the middle fell out.

Steve held up the dog tags and stared at them, pale-faced and almost sweating. "These are my original dog tags from World War II. The last time I saw them, they were in an exhibit at the Smithsonian. But this…" he held up the disc. "Is one of Tony's Arc Reactors. You could maybe fake the first – even if you'd have had to go to my world anyway to look up my old serial # - but nobody except Stark knows how to make one of these." Steve turned the Arc Reactor over and over in his hand. "How did you even get your hands on this, and do you have any idea how frantic he's going to be looking for it?"

"Magic." the Ancient One answered matter-of-factly. "And yes, he is likely to be rather upset as soon as he discovers it is missing. Which he hasn't yet, so you can simply return it to him before he does."

"You said that you were glad to have finally found me." Steve looked at her gravely. "Which implies that you were looking for quite a while. So you're not talking about a trip you can make easily or casually. It took you effort to pull this off."

"Were it not for the artifact I bear, I would not have been able to make the journey at all." the Ancient One agreed. "And to answer the question you did not ask; yes, this would be a one-time journey. After you leave here, you would not be able to return. Even the Bifrost does not reach this far across the dimensional gulf, and I would not essay this strenuous a sojourn again without a greatly compelling need."

"Which means if I go back with you, I'm leaving here for good." Steve looked at her, and then down at the pensive Courtney at his side. "Did you tell them back home that you'd found me?"

"I have kept my own counsel upon this matter." the Ancient One said.

The entire tableau held their breath waiting for Steve's answer, and for a long minute he stood with his eyes shut, breathing heavily with indecision. Finally his eyes opened and fixed on the Ancient One again.

"No thank you, ma'am. I… I do miss the people I knew there. Sometimes a lot more than I'm willing to admit. But I'm sure that they've already buried me and grieved for me. And I- I'm finding something new here." Steve answered her with an effort. Courtney gave an explosive sigh of relief. "So let them keep thinking I'm dead, and soon enough they'll be at peace… and so will I."

"Such an answer was not unexpected." the Ancient One nodded to Steve compassionately. "And I entirely appreciate the weight of the decision that you have just made." Her head shook slightly from side to side, and she continued in a much graver tone of voice. "Unfortunately, you will not really have a choice."

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" Blazer asked mildly as her aura flared to full power and every other hero in the cafeteria brought their powers or weapons to readiness. "Because I'm certain I didn't hear you correctly."

"That is not what I meant." The Ancient One looked at her. "I have no intention of using force, and it is not I that will compel the Captain to return. It is the press of events that will, and his own conscience." Her level gaze met Steve's own, and something within him quailed in anticipation. "By virtue of my office and the powers that I wield, it is given to me to see at least some possibilities of the future. And while the future is always in motion and destiny is often malleable… that is under normal circumstances." Her voice thickened with sorrow. "I cannot see clearly ahead beyond the next several years, but the shadow of doom still lays long on the years beyond. The power that lay behind the attack of Loki, behind the Chitauri invasion – that power will come for Earth again. And so far the threats that you have seen have been but the vanguard, the merest tithe of its true strength. When the master of the Chitauri at long last comes for our world, it will take all of Earth's mightiest heroes to turn him back. Should any significant one among their number – let alone their best leader – be absent, or be divided against the other… then we will lose." She looked away from the dumbstruck Captain, sparing him the weight of her gaze. "And the Chitauri's master will not be the only threat of the future. There are many more enemies to come, both foreign and domestic." She deliberately quoted the end of the Army officer's oath of commissioning.

"You're lying." Robert glared at her suspiciously. "Not that a world being in danger is such an unbelievable thing, but in that you only brought this up right after he told you 'No thanks'. That's exactly what someone would say if they were trying to manipulate a man like him."

"What need would I have to lie, Robert Robertson?" the Ancient One stared levelly back at him… and then suddenly the force of her aura pressed upon the entire room.

"Shit!" Malevola swore, her sword almost falling from her hands as she flinched backwards. "Guys? That woman is the single strongest Order mage I have ever even heard of, let alone seen! She could wipe almost everybody here!"

"I get it." Flambae nodded as the Ancient One's aura withdrew. "If you wanted to just force him back, you are powerful enough that you could have just shown up when he was alone and kidnapped him. You wouldn't need to play any mindgame."

"Also, Order mages have to maintain a certain respect for the truth. Which doesn't mean that those types don't still all like to have their secrets and agendas… but they risk a whole lot if they ever openly break their sworn word." Malevola explained. "Do we have your sworn word that you're not lying about this?"

"By the Vishanti, I swear that what I have said to Captain Rogers today is no lie." the Ancient One immediately agreed.

"Damn." Blazer acknowledged sadly. "So you really are telling the truth that he has to go back or else his homeworld is doomed… and you did it here and now because wanted all of his friends here to understand why he had to leave us."

Steve Rogers was almost entirely deaf to the conversation, as he had been since the Ancient One had delivered her warning. Tears leaked from his eyes as he forced himself to confront the truth – his pleasant sojourn in this world, the siren-like call of freedom from care and duty, had only been an illusion and a temporary respite. As much as he might wish otherwise, ultimately the world – his home world – needed The Captain more than Steve Rogers needed… needed…

"I've got to put her in the water! Right now I'm in the middle of nowhere, but if I wait any longer a lot of people are going to die." His own words echoed to him from the depths of his own worst memory… the day he'd had to leave Peggy behind forever… the day he was now reliving, but even worse.

"I-I'm sorry, Courtney." He gasped, and she gathered him helplessly into her arms as he sobbed openly into her shoulder. "I'm so sorry… but I have to go." His voice broke.

"Of course you do." Her voice came to his ears, sweet and soft and so, so damnably steady despite her own anguish. Steve's heart broke even further at how she must be feeling, and what a killing effort she must be making to keep even a hint of her own grief out of her voice-

"And I'm coming with you." His eyes snapped open as she finished speaking.

"Courtney?" Steve gasped incredulously, still uncertain of what he'd heard.

He looked down to see her smile – that same adorable, sweet little smile that had first attracted him to her, that he'd always thrilled to see every time since – and no tears in her eyes at all. "Did you really think that I'd let this be good-bye?" she asked him. "The day we met, you told me that you wanted me to be your first choice." She kissed him once, softly, and then looked back up at him endearingly. "And you will always be mine."

"I can transport two as readily as I can one." the Ancient One agreed with a smile. "But understand that this decision will not be reversible. If you choose this path, you will leave your own homeworld behind forever."

"I've got no family." Courtney shrugged simply. "And while I'll definitely miss my friends, Steve's more important."

"Hell yeah, sister." Prism agreed soberly. "A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do!"

"Your precious people are what matter the most." Coupe nodded in agreement. "And you sacrifice whatever you have to, in order to keep them."

"We'll miss you." Blazer said simply. "Both of you."

"I-I still can't believe this is real." Steve floundered. "Courtney, are you sure?"

Courtney looked at him as if he were a dunce. "Of course I'm sure!" Her voice softened. "I love you."

"… I love you too." Steve whispered into her hair as he pulled her into his arms again. "Thank you, Courtney. I couldn't have- I just couldn't have."

"Do they have to leave right away, or can we get a day or two to help put their affairs in order?" Robert asked the Ancient One.

"An opportunity to rest for a bit before the journey back would actually be welcome." the Ancient One agreed amiably. "We shall depart on the morrow."

"There's gonna be a lot of paperwork to get through before then." Chase agreed. "Decidin' where and to who to leave your things, sellin' your stuff…"

"I'll need to get her file together so those SHIELD people back where Steve's from can have something to work with regarding setting up her identity there." Robert said. "Although I'll probably be in such a hurry that I won't be able to get her entire arrest record or criminal history in there. Eh, it'll probably be fine." He smiled.

"You will be able to provide for her over there, I trust?" Blazer asked Steve in her 'Mom' voice. "Seeing as how she'll be leaving behind most of her assets and have an entirely uncheckable employment history, much like you did when you arrived here."

"I have Army retirement pay more appropriate to a full bird colonel on top of my SHIELD salary." Steve answered her. "And that's before we even start to get into some other people I know back home. Even before she finds her own work, she'll never want for anything."

"One minor concern." Mr. Payne unexpectedly broke in. "If my client is about to permanently depart the known universe, she will not be available to appear in court. Which would void the pending litigation."

"Damn it." Blazer swore. "Not that she can take the money with her where she's going, but the idea of them getting away with it is horrible."

Steve was struck by a sudden thought, and began to smile crookedly. "Actually… I just had an idea."

* * * * *

Earth-Dispatch
Arrival: D Plus 65

"And, done." Mr. Payne said with satisfaction as the final signature hit the papers.

"Thank you - and your client, of course - for your cooperation, Mr. Payne." SDN's Vice-President of Legal gratefully accepted his copy of the settlement agreement, and all the other SDN corporate officials in the boardroom openly sighed in relief that SDN could survive the upcoming crisis merely with a very expensive settlement payment – the majority of which they could offload on their malpractice insurance – as opposed to the PR and legal disaster they were facing if this had gone to a courtroom and faced actual discovery. "It is very good for all parties concerned that we were able to settle this amiably."

"Oh, quite." Mr. Payne smiled thinly. "I can say in complete truthfulness that I have never had a more satisfying legal experience outside of a courtroom in my entire career."

"What deposit arrangements would your client prefer for her payment?" the VP of Finance asked him.

"You can just void the check." Mr. Payne surprised him. "She won't be needing it."

"But… but we're talking about thirty million dollars here." The CEO of SDN sputtered.

"Oh, we're entirely aware." Blazer smirked from her own seat at the table.

"Does… does she wish it donated to charity?" the VP of Finance asked him, still confused, as the VP of Marketing suddenly turned green as a horrible suspicion began to dawn on him-

"Ah, no." Mr. Payne smiled like a shark. "For the record, the settlement payment need not be made because as per the settlement agreement, violation of the accompanying NDA voids payment and requires reimbursement of all already paid funds. And as I already have instructions from my client to immediately place any and all documentation from this case into the public record, the NDA's penalty clause is of course activated as of today. So the good news is, you don't owe us a dime. The bad news, of course, is that all of your dirty laundry is about to become headline news."

"But- but 'all the documentation' includes the signed statements of responsibility that were insisted upon!" Legal sputtered.

"Goodness, you're right! It entirely does!" Blazer agreed, her voice sugar-sweet with malice.

"But we're facing multiple Federal investigations!" the CEO roared at Legal. "And now they'll practically have signed confessions of our guilt!"

"Not practically. Literally." Mr. Payne's grin only grew wider.

"Blazer, you have to stop this!" the CEO begged her. "The corporation- we'll go out of business! All of our work will be undone!"

"SDN will be fine." Blazer shrugged off his concerns. "The corporation's services – the core services, not the things you obsessed over – are too valuable to too many people for them to go without for long. The government, as well as the investors, won't let the corporation implode." She shrugged. "They will insist on a complete change in management and substantial revision of policy, of course… but given that your management and your policies almost led to the entire city of Los Angeles going up in flames and SDN becoming a hollow mockery of itself, somehow the thought of that happening just completely fails to break my heart."

"There is no way you can reconcile your duties as an SDN management employee with your cooperation in this! I could find a dozen perfectly legitimate reasons to fire you!" Legal thundered.

"Oh, right, I forgot!" She reached into the pile of papers in front of her on the table and pulled one out to slide it over to the CEO. "That's my resignation." She pulled out a thin stack of other papers and also handed them over. "And those are the resignations of several senior members of the Torrance branch's management staff – including Robert and Chase and Royd – and the entire Z-Team, who are gladly availing themselves of their new and renegotiated plea bargains to finally get shut of the coercive employment contracts that SDN was forcing them to take otherwise!" She shrugged. "Oh well!"

"But- but what will you do?" the CEO gaped at her. "SDN has been your entire hero career! And- and-"

"Well, my boyfriend is about to help invent cold fusion in the next few months – and no, SDN doesn't own a single piece of the R&D for that, because all rights to the Astral Pulse remaining exclusively Robert's regardless of how much help SDN facilities or employees helped him in reconstructing his suit was iron clad in his original employment contract – so, I really don't think I'll go hungry." Blazer shrugged. "Particularly not given that I not only have substantial savings, but a couple of friends of mine donated their million-dollar rewards from the US government to the cause of funding Robert's new tech startup. Which will almost certainly be sponsoring a new corporate hero team under my leadership."

"Payne!" Legal sputtered. "You were working on contingent fee! You're losing out-!"

"Oh dear, however will I survive the loss of my share of the thirty million dollar settlement fee." He drawled ironically. "Certainly not by offering to represent all of the many other employees you have allegedly harassed and defrauded in many and diverse ways in a class action lawsuit for a sum next to which the offered settlement to Miss Doe will look like peanuts." He chuckled. "Much less a class action lawsuit where my victory would be nigh-inevitable if I simply subpoena'ed myself, seeing as how your own signatures on your own statements of responsibility would be a very substantial preponderance of the evidence in any such case." He chuckled. "If you even have time to appear in court to defend yourselves there, given the many and diverse criminal trials you may potentially be attending in the near future on a rather appalling list of federal charges."

Blazer chuckled softly. "So yes. I believe that the proper legal term for what is about to happen to you is 'We get the gold mine, and you get the shaft.'' She stood up and Mr. Payne along with her, and they began gathering up the papers into their briefcases.

"What kind of person forfeits this much money?" Legal sputtered. "What is Invisigal even going to be doing?"

"The only appropriate answer I could make there is 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'" Mr. Payne quoted Shakespeare.

"Good day, gentlemen." Blazer smirked at them all, and they both left the senior executives of SDN helplessly sitting amongst the metaphorical ash and ruins of their own mismanagement.

"Robert? It's all done." Blazer said into her phone as she left the SDN building. "Has the farewell party started yet? It has? Then tell them I'm on my way."

* * * * *

Author's Note: And so we do the wrap-up segment for Earth-Dispatch so that our readers know how the various plot arcs there close out, and yes, that is indeed Steve's and Courtney's FBI reward money that they dumped over to help Robert's new fusion tech startup. (And yes, Sonar is handling the business side of that thing for them.) After all, they don't need the money where they're going.

cliffc999 · 2026-01-11T14:41:34+0000

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Minus 41

"Intruder alert-!" the smooth mechanical voice announced, before immediately interrupting itself and continuing in a slightly stunned tone of voice. "Captain Rogers. I think I speak for all of us when I say that it is most unexpected but also most gratifying to see you again."

Steve and Courtney both landed lightly on the floor of the penthouse suite as the portal behind them closed, each of them dressed in neat civilian clothing and holding a duffel bag. "JARVIS?" Steve greeted the voice. "We're in New York, then?"

"Correct, Captain." JARVIS answered. "You are in the living room of the master suite of Stark Tower, and it is 9:34 am on January 7th, 2014. You have been missing and presumed dead for sixty-five days."

"Well, that certainly beats seventy years." Steve answered amusedly. "Courtney, this is JARVIS, the artificial intelligence built by my friend Tony Stark. JARVIS, this is Courtney Jane Doe, she's a very good friend of mine."

"Welcome to Stark Tower, Miss Doe." JARVIS greeted her amiably. "Protocol requires that I obtain the permission of either Mister Stark or Miss Potts before inviting you to stay, but I can certainly offer you the hospitality of a visit while-"

"Holy shit, it is you." Steve and Courtney both turned to see Tony standing in the doorway of the master bedroom nearby. The haggard-looking man was dressed in a bathrobe that was half-open enough to reveal bandages still wrapped around his chest, and he was pale and slightly unsteady on his feet. "I thought the pain meds were making me hallucinate. JARVIS, I'm not hallucinating am I?"

"No Sir, you are not hallucinating. Captain Rogers is physically present, and arrived in the Tower by what appeared to be an unknown variety of controllable wormhole approximately two minutes ago." JARVIS replied.

"You're back." Tony stepped forward and drew the stunned Steve into a hug as he manfully struggled not to cry. "You're really really back. We thought that wormhole vaporized you, man. But you were just stuck somewhere over the rainbow, then?"

"Alternate Earth. Different history, different people. It's a long story, but for right now… it's good to see you, Tony."

"Good to see you too." Tony choked out. "Fuck, when we thought you were gone I just completely crashed the hell out. Never do that to me again. Please."

"Are you okay?" Steve asked him. "You look like you just walked out of the hospital."

"Kinda just did." Tony agreed. "Had a thing with some terrorists a little while ago. They blew up my Malibu house, almost killed me, left me needing heart surgery - it was some serious déjà vu all over again. Really sucked, but me and Rhodey eventually wrapped up all that shit. And at least the latest round of repairs finally let me get the Arc Reactor out. I tossed it somewhere." He thumped his chest.

"I think I found it, actually." Steve drew the Arc Reactor out of his pocket. "The person who helped me get back here brought it with them to prove that they were really from here."

"Huh." Tony glanced incuriously at the reactor and then tossed it onto the nearby coffee table. "Weird. Anyway, I-" Tony stopped and blinked several times, then looked to the side, then blinked again. "Uh, Cap? Who's she?" he pointed at Courtney, who he'd only just noticed was standing there.

"Tony, this is my girlfriend Courtney. I met her over there, and she came back with me." Steve said proudly.

"Girlfriend?" Tony blinked in shock. "Um, did you mean 'friend who happens to genetically possess a double X chromosome', or did you mean-?"

"He means that I'm the girl he's fucking on the regular." Courtney replied amusedly.

Tony stopped dead and then burst out in wheezing, helpless laughter. "Oh my God don't do that! I literally just had a heart transplant, I'm gonna need some more recovery time before it can take that kind of strain!" He looked back at Steve. "Are all the girls on her home planet like her? Because if they are, I'm gonna need to see if I can figure out how to wormhole back there-"

"And why would you need to do that?" an amused female voice broke in, and Tony gave a guilty flinch. The beautiful redheaded woman entering the master suite from the elevator smiled at everyone. "Welcome to Stark Tower, and please make yourself at home." she greeted Courtney. "And Steve-" Pepper Potts drew up in front of him and smiled tremulously, keeping her composure only with a visible effort. "There… really aren't words adequate to describe how I'm feeling – how we're all feeling – right now, but I'm sure you already know. Welcome home."

"Thank you, Pepper." Steve smiled back at her. "Courtney Jane Doe, meet Tony Stark and his girlfriend, Pepper Potts. Guys, this is Courtney."

"You journeyed to another planet entirely to stay with the one you fell in love with." Pepper greeted Courtney in awe. "You must be a remarkable person. The only other person I know who's done anything like that is literally a god."

"He's the remarkable one." Courtney nodded towards Steve. "I'm just a girl, really." She continued embarrassedly. "Are you sure it's okay if we stay here? I mean, do you have room-?"

"I am the single richest person in human history." Tony stated matter-of-factly, and Courtney gasped in shock. "And right now we're standing on top of the skyscraper that I built and own. There's a whole suite downstairs I keep for Steve that he almost never uses, just like the ones I keep for the rest of the team. And you mentioned that you guys were already at the co-habiting stage so sure, move on in."

"Thanks, Tony." Steve agreed. "I was hoping you could help Courtney set up something, in fact. Not that SHIELD couldn't do her paperwork to move here, but-"

"Fury is a lot less likely to try and dick her around on the terms if old one-eye knows that I'm lurking in the background ready to put in a competitive bid." Tony nodded vigorously. "Because there are a lot of people who are going to immediately leap to the conclusion that she's a potential handle on you that they can crank, and some of them are the people who signed your paychecks." Tony blinked. "JARVIS? Counter-surveillance status on the penthouse?"

"Counter-surveillance was increased to maximum as soon as I detected anomalous phenomena and Captain Rogers' arrival on my own initiative, Sir." JARVIS answered him. "I… calculated that you would wish privacy on this matter until you could release the information on your own terms."

"And you calculated correctly, just like you always do." Tony thanked JARVIS. "Seriously, Cap, you're dead right now. You had the big funeral at Arlington and everything. The President gave a speech-"

"The President?" Courtney mouthed incredulously.

"-and everybody was there. I had front-row seats." Tony continued heedlessly. "Which that plus what JARVIS just said means that until after we actually pick up a phone and tell someone that you're back… nobody knows that you're back." He looked at Steve. "If you want, you can leave here with a completely new identity for both you and her. I hack some databases, slide you a few million bucks on the down-low to set yourselves up with… and you get a new life. You could settle down with your girl, find yourself some peace and happiness. Stop having to jump on Fury's string all the damn time." Tony smiled at Steve. "Honestly, one of the biggest regrets I had when I thought you were dead is that I didn't offer you a life-line out of that spook shit earlier. Because I really didn't think that you were happy there. Were you?"

"No, I wasn't." Steve agreed matter-of-factly. "Unfortunately, retiring is not an option for me right now." Steve exhaled. "How I got back was with the help of a sorceress from here, she called herself 'The Ancient One'. She said she knew Thor at least a little, so I'll double-check about her with him next time I talk to him. But she told me that I had to come back here, because whatever was behind the Chitauri? We were right, they're coming for a rematch. She didn't know exactly when or who, but it sounded like it's going to be bad, Tony. Bad enough that it'll need every Avenger all pulling together again and at the top of our game. Bad enough that I won't get to sit it out, no matter how much I might want to."

"We were already talking about maybe getting the band back together when we met up at your funeral." Tony nodded soberly. "Nothing's come of it yet, we've all had other shit on our plate recently and the threat board's been mostly clear except for local stuff-" He thumped his chest again. "But yeah, if you're up for being officially alive again then we definitely need to have another team meeting about all that stuff you just said. You want me to ping all the guys first and we have a huddle here, and then we only get around to telling Fury you're alive a few days after we've done that?"

"Sounds good to me." Steve agreed. "And Tony… thank you. Even if I couldn't accept it, that's still one of the kindest things anybody's ever offered to do for me."

"Any time." Tony agreed. "JARVIS? Tell the Avengers- shit, get together with Pepper first and come up with some kind of story that gets them all here soonest and not expecting horrible shit, but which doesn't tip Fury off too much. She'll know what to say. Then call the team meeting. Pep, what else do we need to be doing right now?"

"I go talk to Legal about a hypothetical case involving a dimensional refugee/immigrant and what would be the way to start setting that up, and you ask our houseguests if they need anything to eat." Pepper said calmly. "Then we can show them their suite after early brunch."

"There's something else." Steve suddenly remembered. "Tony, Courtney has a cybernetic implant in her lung. A bad guy promised her a cure for her asthma, then turned the implant off when she wouldn't work for him. The techs back where she's from couldn't do anything with it-"

"Asthma, huh?" Tony interrupted. "I'm kinda on medical restriction from doing lab stuff for at least another week, but yeah, as soon as I can I'll definitely have a look at it. An asthma cure would help tons of people, and if this bad guy solved the general implantation problem for something as sensitive as lung tissue then that by itself has implications- hell, the patent rights could potentially be worth hundreds of millions if the anti-rejection factor I'm hypothesizing turns out to be valid, and as this would be relic tech she'd brought to our Earth she'd have the discovery rights on it-" He stopped his own torrent of mad science with an effort. "And I get it, if this was originally bad guy tech then somebody needs to make sure it doesn't have nasty surprises lurking in it to jump out and hurt your girl later, and I can definitely do something about that. We had, uh, our own bad experience with that kind of thing recently."

Steve took in Pepper's pale face and drawn expression and rapidly worked out just what Tony had meant. "Are any of these terrorists you went around with recently still left, and would you like some help fixing that situation if they are?" he asked Tony firmly.

"Oh, we clean sweeped." Tony said proudly. "But thanks for offering."

"Hold up." Courtney stopped everyone, and turned to Steve. "The President gave the eulogy at your funeral. Your hero team apparently didn't just fight in an alien invasion but was the entire fight against the alien invasion and does all the big strategy for the rematch. Your power-armor friend you mentioned isn't just a rich guy but is the richest guy. And alphabet agency directors personally want to mess with your life, and-" She looked Steve penetratingly. "You summed up your whole life story for me already, but I'm starting to think you might have just been a tiny bit modest about the details. Steve, exactly how famous are you here, really?"

"Um-" Steve began to stammer, and Tony's laughter cut him off.

"JARVIS?" Tony grinned ear to ear. "I think Courtney needs the multi-media presentation on the old Living Legend here. Put together an executive summary and send it to…" he looked around and grunted in relief at spotting something on a nearby table. "Here, use this tablet." He handed it to Courtney. "Oh, and make sure to use the right opening credits music!"

"Tony, no." Steve moaned softly. "Please."

"Opening credits mus-?" Courtney puzzled, and then looked down at the Youtube video that had just opened up and started playing on the tablet and stopped dead at the sight. Steve gave Tony a mock death glare as a very familiar opening flourish of trumpets began to sound from the speakers and his least favorite song in the entire world began playing.

Who's strong and brave,
Here to save the American wayyyyy?

"Why did I miss this again?" Steve sighed quietly, as Courtney began to grin ear to ear before choking helplessly with laughter.

Who vows to fight like a man
For what's right, night and dayyyyy?
Who will campaign door-to-door for America?
Carry the flag shore-to-shore for America

Pepper laid a commiserating hand on Steve's shoulder at their mutual inability to stop the Tony train once it had lost its brakes, and then gave Tony her own icy stare that bounced right off his mirth as if from a force field.

From Hoboken to Spokane
The Star Spangled Man with a Plan!

* * * * *

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Minus 40

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today-" Tony began smugly.

"Tony." Pepper cut him off firmly but affectionately, before she turned to the Avengers all sitting in the master suite's living room. "First off, thank you all for coming so promptly, especially when I had to be a little vague about exactly why we were calling this meeting because we didn't want any of the many people-"

"Fury." Tony coughed loudly.

"-who eavesdrop on our communications sometimes to know about this just yet." Pepper continued. "Thor, where's Jane?"

"She had to remain behind with Dr. Solveig. Her researches are at an important juncture." Thor nodded.

"Well, I'm sorry she'll have missed this." Pepper's beaming smile finally broke loose from where she'd been restraining it the entire time. "Because we have very, very good news. Just yesterday we safely recovered someone that we'd all been missing and had thought was dead."

Natasha's eyes widened and Clint rapidly began to look around, as Bruce and Thor were just starting to straighten up in realization.

Tony wiped tears out of his eyes and grinned more wildly than all the rest. "Yeah, you're right." Tony nodded. "Cap pulled off the 'everybody thinks I'm dead but here I am' thing again."

Steve Rogers, dressed casually in jeans and a collared shirt, stepped out of the nearby bedroom door and only barely kept a straight face himself as he stepped out to greet his friends. "Hello, everyone. I'm sorry I gave you all such a fright, but it really wasn't anything I'd planned on."

"Steve." Natasha said softly, wonderingly, before immediately turning to look intently at Tony. "Are you sure it's actually him?"

Steve broke out in soft laughter. "Never change, Natasha."

"Yeah, we tested everything from DNA on up." Tony nodded back at her vigorously. "Definitely the 100% original Capuccino, accept no substitute flavors."

"What was the first question you asked me?" Clint nodded at Steve, a slight smile at his face.

"I asked if you knew how to fly one of those jets." Steve acknowledged their original meeting onboard the Helicarrier, immediately after Clint had been freed from Loki's mind control. "And the next question I asked was if you had a suit."

Clint's thin smile broke out into a beaming one at the further confirmation. "It's really you." He stepped forward to shake Steve's hand. "You gotta stop doing this whole 'heroic return from death' thing, Captain. The gag will only get stale if you overwork it." Steve laughed out loud at Clint's cheerful sarcasm.

"We must celebrate!" Thor boomed out joyously, stepping forward to clasp Steve by the shoulders and shake him gently. "We had all thought you dead, Steven! Even far-sighted Heimdall could discover no trace of you, nor the most vigorous explorations of the wormhole's possible course via the Bifrost. You must lay out a feast, Tony, one fit for the occasion!"

"The caterers are already standing by, big guy." Tony gave Thor a thumbs-up. "Soon enough we'll have to let Cap check back in, but right now the only people who know he's back are all standing in my penthouse. So tonight's just for the team."

"Welcome back, Steve." Bruce Banner nodded at him quietly, before chuckling. "And now I can finally stop apologizing for not being able to make your funeral."

Natasha finally broke loose from her shock and finished regaining control of her expressions enough to step forward and just barely avoid grabbing Steve by his forearms. "Welcome back." she forced out. "Steve, I'm so sorry that I wasn't with you on that mission. If I had been, then maybe-"

"Natasha." Steve reassured the upset woman. "It's okay. It's really okay. What happened wasn't your fault. And honestly, I would not have given that wormhole trip up for anything."

"Which segues right into the even better part of this whole thing!" Tony said eagerly. "You guys are gonna flip when you see this!" Tony looked around and saw nothing. "Hey! Where are you? You're missing your cue!"

"Uh, hi?" a shy female voice broke into everyone's awareness, as they all turned to see a strange young woman with short black hair and olive skin standing silhouetted against the one-way panoramic windows of the penthouse.

"How did you get over there without me seeing you?" Natasha went taut and her hand almost reached for her weapon, before she caught up to her reflexes and realized that clearly this person wasn't an intruder.

"Yeah." Clint agreed, his own posture relaxing from a ready stance. "I have really good peripheral vision, and there's no way you would have been able to reach where you're standing from any of the nearby cover without being in my field of view at least once. Even Nat's not that sneaky."

Courtney answered the question by turning invisible and then immediately rematerializing.

"… okay, I'm a little jealous." Natasha immediately admitted. "Seriously, so useful a power."

"You are not merely a new prospect for the team that Stark discovered. You returned with Steven, from the world that had been sent to." Thor reasoned wisely. "That is why you are also being introduced to us at this time, instead of later."

"Yeah." Courtney nodded nervously. "Um, it's very nice to meet you-"

"Hey." Steve said warmly, stepping up alongside her and laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "There's no need to be shy. Everybody will like you."

Four people immediately took in the significance of Steve's facial expression and body language, which they had never seen him use before with any woman – not Natasha, not Pepper, not anyone.

"Damn." Clint said knowingly, before turning to face a gleeful Tony. "So Steve returning from an alien planet he got randomly wormholed to really was only the second-biggest surprise you had for us."

"It kinda is." Steve agreed proudly. "Everyone, this is Courtney Jane Doe – yes, that actually is her real name – and yes, she's my girlfriend. Courtney, these are-"

"People who hope that Steve's warned you what kind of madhouse you're about to step into." Bruce interrupted sympathetically. "Seriously, Steve Rogers returns from being lost on another world, and a mystery woman comes back with him to become the official Star-Spangled Girlfriend? You're going to be a media frenzy."

"Please don't remind me." Courtney shook his head. "Tony and Pepper have already been trying to prepare me for what kind of a circus this is going to be, but-"

"But the truly important thing here is not the chattering of malicious gossips or the curiosity of idle masses." Thor said gravely as he came to his feet. The massive and imposing frame of the God of Thunder cast a shadow over her as he stepped forward, and Courtney almost stepped back before Thor surprised her by kneeling down enough to bring his head level with her own. "I am presuming that the manner of your return here with my shield-brother does not allow for regular travel back to your home?"

"The sorceress- she said it was a one-way trip, yes." Courtney acknowledged.

Thor beamed at her with approval. "Then clearly your love for Steven is genuine and heartfelt. To leave your home behind forever to remain with they whom you love is a great sacrifice indeed, and proves beyond doubt that you have a great and worthy heart." Thor nodded to her respectfully as he stood up. "I am Thor Odinson, Prince of Asgard, and I too once faced the choice you did – and not even to such great extent as yours, for I at least can return to visit my home with sufficient effort while you are denied even that much. That a man such as Steven Rogers would choose you to share his life with is already testimonial enough to prove the good character and strength of spirit of any woman, but to see such a valorous and loving deed done with my own eyes is a remarkable thing indeed. Be welcome to Midgard, beloved of my shield-brother, and know that my arm will strike down any foe in your defense as readily as Steven's own."

"That's not true." Courtney denied immediately. "My, uh, good character and spirit thing. I mean, maybe I'm not horrible, but-" She shook her head. "Let's just get it out right away. I was a thief and a criminal."

"Was." Steve stated firmly.

Natasha stepped forward and gave Courtney a gentle smile. "We don't all have uncheckered pasts either. And nothing you said contradicts a single thing that Thor just said."

"Courtney doesn't like talking about herself, so I just want to get out that she'd already given up her whole life of crime thing before I even got there." Steve said. "I just helped her get clear of some of the lingering consequences of it."

"So you're ahead of me then." Natasha acknowledged. "Has Steve mentioned anything to you about my past?"

"If you're the woman he partnered with who used to, um, assassinate people? Then yes." Courtney replied nervously.

"I didn't even begin to change my ways until after Clint reached out a hand to me." Natasha reassured Courtney. "I wasn't even really able to conceive that I could change. But eventually I did, and they still accepted me despite all that. So don't ever feel that you need to apologize for being you."

"And if you ever need to talk to someone about how it feels to have red in your ledger that you still want to wipe out? Come to either of us, we'll understand." Clint nodded, and then stepped forward to introduce himself. "Clint Barton, and she's Natasha Romanov."

"Dr. Bruce Banner." the shy scientist nodded to her.

"If he's the god, and you're the two operatives, then you're the… one that transforms?" Courtney asked diffidently, and Bruce exhaled heavily and nodded.

"That's me. Don't ask to see it, though. This is a little bit of a confined space to bring out the Other Guy." Bruce joked nervously.

"I'm sorry if I stepped on a landmine." Courtney acknowledged his tension. "Steve's talked all about you, of course, but-" she trailed off.

"But there'll be plenty of time for everybody to get to know everybody." Pepper broke in gently.

"Seriously, guys, she's usually much feistier than this. I think you all are kinda overwhelming her." Tony added.

"Yeah, we are crowding the space a little." Clint acknowledged and everybody stepped back to let Courtney breathe. "But Steve, you have got to tell us all about it soon or the curiosity is going to kill us."

"I will, I will, I promise." Steve held up placating hands. "And for my own confession?" He looked down at Courtney. "I was this close to deciding not to come back. No, I actually did decide not to come back at first, and the only reason I'm not a complete wreck right now is Courtney's own decision to come back with me. That's how much she means to me."

"We would sorely have missed you, believing you dead, but I would not have derided you for such a choice." Thor agreed. "You have already done your duty and more, and even the doughtiest warrior eventually earns their peace."

"Unfortunately, seems like not so much in this case." Steve replied soberly. "Do you know anyone called 'the Ancient One of Kamar-Taj'?"

"I do." Thor acknowledged. "I have not spoken to her for over a century but she is the Sorcerer Supreme of Midgard, the seniormost of a secret order of mystics who act as some of your world's hidden defenders against threats from the other realms. She is the sorceress your beloved spoke of, then? The one that facilitated your return here?"

"She was." Steve said. "And she convinced me to come back when she warned me that the same threat that was behind the Chitauri is eventually coming here for a rematch. She didn't have a time frame except for 'sometime after the next several years', or much detail on the threat, but-" Steve took a deep breath. "She said that if we weren't all unified, and prepared to fight harder than we've ever done before, we were going to lose everything."

"Oh, Fury's going to love hearing that." Natasha murmured.

"So, we're officially teaming up again?" Bruce asked. "Like we were already starting to discuss while you were gone?"

"We've still got some time." Steve acknowledged. "But yeah, even if it's going to take me some time to figure out how to disentangle from SHIELD-" He nodded apologetically to Natasha and Clint.

"We get it." Clint acknowledged. "We can do the detached duty thing as needed, but we're just senior agents and you're STRIKE Ops commander. That's not a part-time job, and you're too prominent in SHIELD to really be able to take any lesser position. For you it's all or nothing."

"And while I'll give Nick a few months of notice before I resign, it's gonna be nothing." Steve gave a meaningful look at Courtney. "Kinda hard to juggle both SHIELD and a- personal life."

"Well, some people manage." Clint agreed evenly. "But yeah, it's not always possible."

"We shall speak further of war and sorrow at the proper time." Thor broke in firmly. "Today is a day of joy, and a celebration of friendships old and new."

"Truer words were never spoken." Tony agreed. "JARVIS? Tell them to bring up the good stuff, and let's get this party started!"

* * * * *

Author's Note: And so they return to the MCU. I've went back and readjusted the 'D Minus' dates for the earlier MCU segments because I always knew how shortly before Insight I wanted Steve to arrive back here, I just didn't know exactly how long the Dispatch sergment would be taking.

That is indeed the events of Iron Man 3 that Tony had just recently gone through and is referring to. (In fact, Iron Man 3 canonically happens only five to six weeks before TWS, which is why Tony has no involvement in the events of TWS – he's still in recovery.) And Killian jamming the Extremis in Pepper is what Tony was thinking of when he hears that Steve's new girl also had a bad guy putting stuff in her, so Tony can really relate to that right now.

There will be a couple more chapters, and then we're done.

cliffc999 · 2026-01-11T21:32:34+0000

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Minus 39

"Sir? You asked me to give you a five-minute warning." Maria Hill's voice interrupted Nick Fury's concentration.

"That's right, I did." Fury wrenched his concentration away from the analyses he'd been concentrating on and looked up from his desk. "Stark still on schedule, or is he going to flake out at the last minute?"

"It's not Stark." Maria corrected him. "Barton and Romanov are the ones who requested the secure teleconference."

"I'll be damned, they finally remembered who they worked for?" Fury said ironically. "But if they're calling from the Tower then no, Stark approved the call."

"I just hope they're not calling to submit their resignations." she worried. "Sudden Avengers team reunion meeting out of nowhere? If Stark really did carry out his threat and reform the group, then they would have had to pick a side and pick it fast."

"To be honest, if push really did come to shove then I'd rather have them inside Stark's tent and pissin' out then be stuck out in the cold with us just pissin' into the wind." Fury sardonically mangled President Lyndon Johnson's famous quote. "They don't need to take a paycheck from us to remember which side they're on, and the idea of Stark, Thor, and Banner running loose without adult supervision is a nightmare."

"Well, we'll find out soon enough." Maria shrugged philosophically.

"Computer? Seal my office, full countersurveillance suite, hold all my other calls. Open secure teleconference line to Stark Tower and signal we're available." Fury ordered.

"Office sealed. Communications request sent." the SHIELD computer replied. "Request acknowledged. Teleconference starting."

The big wall screen flickered on to show Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov both sitting at a table in the conference room of the Avengers' quarters in Stark Tower. Fury's eyes widened at not only the relaxed body language of the two agents but also Natasha's smile – the first genuine, non-forced smile either SHIELD's Director or Deputy Director had seen from her in over two months.

"Good news, then?" Maria greeted them.

"Very good news." Clint nodded. "Sorry about the comms blackout, boss, but we needed a whole day just to process the ramifications of what we were told… and also to let the hangover wear off." He broke out in a beaming grin. "So starting from the top – somebody just became the first person in history who will need to be taken off the MIA list and restored to life twice."

Fury's mouth fell open, the first time in over a decade he'd shown that much visible shock. "You'd better not be fucking with me, Barton!" he swore viciously.

"He's back, Nick." Natasha smiled at him. "Steve's alive. And yes, we have confirmation of identity." she continued more professionally. "DNA, full biometrics, test questions, everything."

Maria exhaled heavily and blinked away tears, visibly fighting to keep control of her expression. "What happened to him? And what's his condition?"

"The wormhole sent him to an alternate timeline, apparently. A pretty distant one. He got back slightly less than two days ago with some significant help from that, uh, mystical sector that we really don't know much about. " Clint explained. "Not much names or detail available there, but Thor confirmed that whatever it was it was genuine and non-malicious."

"Two days." Fury blinked. "Stark sat on this for two days?"

"Nick, we all know that Tony doesn't trust you any further than he could throw the Triskelion without a suit." Natasha said reasonably. "He never really has. Honestly, we should count our blessings that he actually told us this soon. Knowing Tony he probably at least seriously considered helping Steve continue to fake his death and offering to fund a luxury retirement under a new ID."

"Valid." Fury conceded reluctantly. "Captain Rogers' condition?"

"Better than ever." Clint replied cheerfully. "His involuntary vacation did him a world of good."

"Which brings me to the part that's really going to flip your pancakes." Natasha said impishly. "Steve didn't return alone."

"How many?" Hill asked tautly. "And hostile or non-?"

"One, and about as friendly as it can possibly get." Clint reassured her. "It was like something out of pulp sci-fi. Hero gets cast away to a place where nobody knows him and finds a quiet life after falling in love with a local girl, then has to answer the call again anyway." He turned serious. "And we're very lucky that she agreed to come back with him, or we would not have gotten him back at all."

"We need to get this up front." Natasha said seriously. "Nick, we cannot let anyone else decide to play games with this. Not that you would, but we both know that-"

"Seriously, boss?" Clint interrupted soberly. "If you want shooting that nuke at New York to become only the second stupidest-ass decision in the history of SHIELD, then let anybody on the Council or anywhere else even suggest trying to use her as leverage against Cap. First, Steve would go completely off the reservation if that happened. It would literally be as bad an idea as kidnapping Peggy Carter from the retirement home, if not actually worse. Second, Stark would flip his shit – he's already best friends with her, not to mention his whole reaction to Steve's death and how he's overcompensating for it now. And last but definitely not least, Thor would declare war over it. Remember that he also emigrated to an entirely different planet in order to be with someone he'd fallen in love with, so he very much was impressed by Courtney doing the same thing. And it was enough for him to immediately put her in the same category he keeps Dr. Foster and Darcy Lewis. Touch her and the hammer comes down."

"What the-?" Fury goggled. "Who even is this girl?"

"She's nice." Natasha surprised the two directors. "As for more details we have a whole preliminary dossier compiled, plus she thought ahead enough to bring some paperwork from home. The short version is she's Courtney Jane Doe – yes, that's her actual name – age 27, enhanced with the power to turn invisible for short durations, and was working over in her home timeline for a private security company as a local superpowered backup to law enforcement." Natasha said. "We wrote up the rest. JARVIS? Stream it."

"Datapacket sent." JARVIS' voice broke in on the line. "Files received." SHIELD's own non-sentient computer systems acknowledged. "Malware scan negative."

The computer monitor screen on Fury's desk lit up and a couple of silent minutes passed as him and Hill speed-read through the several pages of the preliminary file.

"Well, it could definitely be worse. A lot worse." Hill nodded. "So, we need to set up a legal identity for her and a 'welcome to Earth' cultural series and otherwise leave her entirely alone?"

"The full cultural series won't be necessary, their parallel Earth appears to have been similar enough to ours that the only thing she needs is a modern history class." Natasha assured them. "And as for rations and quarters, she's already been offered the full hospitality of Stark Tower for the duration so we don't need to do anything there either. The rest is spot on."

"Is she…" Hill broke off. "Did she impress you as a… decent person? Or are we going to have a severely depressed Captain Rogers to deal with at some point?"

"Start picking out your wedding present." Natasha answered immediately. "Well maybe not quite that soon, but… no, they really are one of those almost offensively cute couples. I've never seen Steve happier or more relaxed, and if she doesn't legitimately think that he hung the moon then she's a better actress than I am. Admittedly I've only known her for less than 24 hours, but initial read is that they're for the long haul."

"Good." Hill nodded. "Not just in the sense that we won't have a psychological crisis to deal with in the near future, but he deserves to have something go right for him for once."

"He's not coming back to SHIELD, is he?" Fury said evenly, and Hill turned to him in surprise.

"Start picking out your next STRIKE Ops commander and composing your PR scripts for the Captain's retirement." Clint acknowledged. "Steve said he'd give you several months of notice, minimum, but in half a year at the outside he'll be gone. He's looking forward to family life in the future, and unlike me he doesn't want to balance it against SHIELD."

"And the Avengers?" Fury continued.

"After Steve leaves SHIELD, they'll be reforming." Natasha confirmed. "We're both invited, so we'll have to step back from full-time duty as well."

"In the event of the Avengers returning to active status, extended detached duty is already approved." Fury agreed immediately. "You're both very useful here, but the absolute last thing I want is them running loose without any points of contact."

"We understand." Clint acknowledged.

"How far has the information of Steve's return spread?" Maria asked.

"Right now, you're the only two people outside of the Stark Tower penthouse who know." Clint said. "However, that status will rapidly change. Pepper's already drawn up the press release, and unless SHIELD puts out a release first it will go live at 1600 Eastern time today. So that gives you a little more than seven hours to decide how you're going to make the initial public notification before Stark does it for you."

"Can we get a delay on that?" Fury asked. "Even so much as a day? Because I actually would like to talk to somebody above even my pay grade before just hipshooting this."

"Tony said that you can either get a delay on the press release or you can get the last pair of your new Helicarrier engines delivered on schedule, but pick only one." Natasha said ruefully. "Sorry. He's in a mood."

"Sometimes I wish I'd never convinced him to sell me those damned things, because he's done nothing but twist my arm with them ever since." Fury muttered. "All right, tell him we'll have something out by three."

"Understood. Anything else?" Natasha asked.

"Just one question. Why isn't Rogers reporting in along with you?" Fury inquired.

"Because he's sleeping it off." Clint laughed. "Apparently they actually do make booze that can get him drunk, it's just that they only make it on Asgard."

"I see what you mean about him finally being able to relax." Fury said stolidly. "All right, that's enough to go on for now. I've got to make some calls, but as of 1500 today we go public. In the meantime, just stay there as long as they'll let you and let me know if anything else looks to go haywire. Fury out."

"Acknowledged. Barton out." And the screen blanked out.

"It finally happened." Maria chuckled. "We officially have a 'Cap's girlfriend' to deal with, and it's nobody we ever expected." She gave Nick an amused side-eye. "Disappointed to have all your attempted matchmaking fail?"

"Those ladies were entirely and genuinely self-motivated." Nick protested.

"Yes, and I'm sure it was entirely coincidental that you cycled that many young, attractive, and hero-worshipping junior female staff through Steve's agent supports and liaisons." Maria rolled her eyes. "Seriously, before the wormhole you were just about getting desperate enough to send in Agent Thirteen, weren't you?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny." Fury shook his head flatly. "What's your advice on the initial press release?"

"It's a rope that we're being sold, and Stark wants to see how we hang ourselves with it." Maria answered immediately. "So we do not mention Girlfriend America anywhere in it, even by implication. That's the test."

"What I figured." Fury nodded. "As for the rest, I was thinking we keep it barebones. And we imply that Stark's mad science helped fetch Captain Rogers back – because I am like hell going to mention the word 'magic' in anything officially written down – but we don't actually say that directly."

"I'll start composing it." Maria nodded. "But note, if I have to consult with PR staff about this then it'll be all over the building inside an hour."

"I have to conference call with the Secretary and the President to give them a heads-up." Fury said. "Computer, do we have any non-SHIELD visitors in the building at present?"

"Negative. A Department of Defense liaison will arrive for the counter-terrorism briefing at 1400 hours. That is the only scheduled outside party today." the computer answered.

"Right. Computer, immediate voice call to the Secretary and then patch that into conference call with White House Signals as soon as they get on the line." Fury ordered. "And after we finish that, I have an announcement to make."

* * * * *

"Attention all SHIELD personnel. This is the Director." Fury's voice rang out from every interior speaker in the Triskelion. "We have just had an unscheduled but very positive event."

Heads looked up confusedly from their work all over the building. An 'unscheduled event' almost always meant a crisis announcement. An 'unscheduled but very positive' event was unheard of.

"We have just received word from Stark Tower that thanks to an unprecedented and experimental effort, under circumstances not likely to be repeated, a successful recovery mission has been completed for a senior SHIELD officer who was missing and presumed dead."

Agent Rollins stood up from his firing crouch and absent-mindedly flicked the selector switch on his assault rifle to 'safe' as him and several others on the STRIKE team paused where they were going through the indoor urban assault course to stare at each other incredulously.

"There will be a public announcement of this news at 1500 hours local time today, and any premature communication of this news outside the building before that time will be the worst – and last – idea that anyone has ever had in their SHIELD career." Fury continued.

SHIELD agents and analysts all over the building turned incredulous stares away from the nearest PA speakers towards each other, and a rumble of conversation began to build as everyone questioned each other if this really meant what they thought it did-

"But at this time I am very very pleased to announce that Captain Rogers has returned to us, safe and sound."

Brock Rumlow stood in the operations control center of SHIELD where he had been monitoring suspected terrorist installations via satellite and shook his head wonderingly from side to side. "You've gotta be fucking kidding me." he muttered to himself.

"Preliminary reports are that he is in good condition and high spirits. At present he is convalescing at Stark Tower, and we currently anticipate his return to active duty, after suitable debriefing and evaluations, within the next several weeks."

Sharon Carter sat at her desk, her face buried in her hands and heaving with sobs as the tension of over two months' worth of suppressed grief all discharged at once. She reached for a tissue and loudly and unashamedly blew her nose as she smiled through her tears.

"And in conclusion, all I can say is… God bless America. Fury out."

One heartbeat passed, and then another… and then the sound of cheers resounded through every hallway in the building.

* * * * *

"No sir, I don't think Captain Rogers will want a whole ceremony." Secretary Alexander Pierce said into the phone as he sat at his desk in his office at the very top of the Triskelion, SHIELD's headquarters building. "We'll do a press conference, of course." He paused to listen to the caller. "He apparently had some extra-terrestrial assistance returning from where the wormhole had sent him. Unfortunately we're still a little thin on details, because Mr. Stark has been his usual eccentric self about sharing them. The Captain will be debriefed almost as soon as he's back here, of course, and I'll make sure those reports are sent right to you." He paused again. "Of course, Mr. President. And yes, it's a very good day for America that he's miraculously survived yet again."

Pierce hung up the phone and the politician's smile fell off his face as if surgically removed. He looked up at the tall, muscular man standing at attention in front of his desk.

"Sorry about the delay." Pierce nodded. "The President was in a very chatty mood, and it's not like I can put him on hold. That's the second time he's called today." The Secretary looked down briefly to check the display panel built into his desk and tapped a control. "All right, the room's secure. We can speak plainly."

"Yes sir." Brock Rumlow nodded as he relaxed to at-ease. "So, the Cap really is back then?"

"Safe and sound, from whatever alternate universe he got randomly wormholed into." Pierce nodded. "I'm sure it's a very remarkable tale."

"It's a very remarkable what the fuck is it going to take to kill that guy?" Rumlow burst out incredulously. "I'm starting to wonder if even Project Insight's going to bring enough gun if he can survive this kind of crap!"

"Let's not exaggerate." Pierce reassured his best agent. "While it certainly can't be denied that he's by far the luckiest person known to history – twice over - there's some things that no amount of luck can defend against. Particularly if you don't see them coming."

"You're right, sir." Rumlow apologized. "Sorry, I'm just a little spooked. You personally see a guy get nuclear disintegrated and then he pops up again a couple months later fresh as a daisy, it makes a man start to question the nature of his reality."

"Oh trust me, you're not alone in feeling that way." Pierce agreed. "Which is why I wanted to speak to you. We can – and will – use up several weeks giving the Captain some convalescent leave, debriefing, medical exams, et cetera, but it's not guaranteed we'll be able to continue that pace all the way up to Insight Day. Which means STRIKE will have to prepare for the possibility that you'll be deploying with him at least once more before then, which means you need to make sure every man on the team has his poker face solidly back in place and is prepared not to leak even the slightest thing. And to have all that done before Captain Rogers reports back for duty full-time."

"You can count on me, sir. I'll keep 'em in line." Rumlow nodded. "I also heard the Cap's got a girl now? Are we, uh, doing anything about that?"

"Absolutely. We're rolling out the bureaucratic red carpet for the young lady while smiling and staying on our very best behavior." Pierce nodded at him.

"Good." Rumlow exhaled with relief. "I was afraid that they were thinking that we should black-bag her for leverage or something, and I was already rehearsing how I was going to have to try and explain how that would not be a good idea."

"Exactly." Pierce agreed. "We're less than six weeks out from Insight and so far nobody suspects a thing. Even the recent Avengers surprise team meeting we were worrying about turns out just to have been them privately celebrating Captain Rogers' return before they notified us. Which means that the only thing we need to keep doing is nothing to raise any further alarm."

"Yeah. Plus, the more weekends off he takes to run back up to New York and spend 'em with his lady friend playing honeymoon, the less he's hanging around the office here and possibly noticing anything – which is exactly what we want happening." Rumlow agreed, and then chuckled. "Gotta admit I'm personally a little curious, though. There's barely a woman in the building who wouldn't gladly jump in bed with the Captain if he just crooked a finger at 'em – and some of them work for us! But none of them even got to first base with him, and now he comes back from another planet all shacked up? What, is she like Aphrodite or something?"

"Agent, if I could understand and predict human behavior that exactly then we wouldn't need Project Insight." Pierce chuckled. "Even the best predictive algorithms are only statistical, that's precisely why we're using as much… overcompensation… as we are."

"True enough." Rumlow grinned back. "Okay, so I get STRIKE back solidly into undercover mode and get ready to play Prince Charming if Cap ever brings his lady friend around. Anything else in the program that we need to change?"

"That reminds me." Pierce said. "Given that the Avengers are speaking to each other again, however innocently, we're going to need to take some extra care with distraction ops around Insight Day. I want as few Avengers as possible in North America, let alone in DC, when the time comes."

"Well, Stark doesn't even have a suit to wear anymore, not after the AIM thing, and while he likely intends to rebuild one eventually he's still in surgical recovery now." Rumlow analyzed. "Banner's self-isolating anyway, the only way to get him within a hundred miles of a military base – let alone here – is if he already knew Insight was going down. And Rogers and Romanov were people we were already expecting to be around the building full-time and already planned for. So the sticking point is Thor and Barton. Off the top of my head I don't know what the heck I can do about the thunder god, though."

"I'll handle Thor." Pierce nodded. "I anticipate that the government of Iceland is going to invite him and Dr. Foster to attend some ceremonies in honor of him and Asgard that week, an honor that I'm sure he'll be glad to accept. What I really wanted from you was a suggestion on how to deal with Barton."

"Well I certainly hope you don't want him whacked, because in addition to the fact that dropping his corpse would send Romanov entirely berserk we're talking about the operative that SHIELD originally sent to go shoot her here." Rumlow shook his head. "He's the actual best assassin in this entire building, even if everybody thinks it's her. Plus he's basically impossible to sneak up on. I swear to God that guy has to be enhanced, I don't care what his gene tests say." He took a deep breath. "However, he's also a full-time agent so he still takes orders. And once Project Insight is online we won't need a lot of the terrorist proxies we're using now anymore, so why not just cut one of 'em out early and hang 'em out to dry? We could use one of the Central Asian terror proxies, one of the really brutal ones. If Barton's busy running around in the mountains of Afghanistan or wherever sniping a bunch of mass murdering assholes in the head, then he's not here to potentially back up Rogers and Romanov when shit kicks loose."

"Sounds ideal." Pierce said. "Pick the one you like least, then write up an outline of how to arrange for Barton to go eliminate them at the opportune time and send it to my office."

"Yes sir." Rumlow nodded. "Anything else?"

"That'll do for now." Pierce shook his head. "Dismissed."

"Yes sir." Rumlow came to attention again and saluted. "Hail Hydra."

Pierce nodded in acknowledgement of the salute. "Hail Hydra."

* * * * *

Author's Note: And now we get the reaction shots of their arrival from both SHIELD and HYDRA.

'Agent Thirteen' is Sharon Carter's canonical code name. Seriously, you cannot tell me Peggy's niece ended up assigned to Steve's detail in TWS by coincidence.

And honestly, given the amount of hero-worship and 'Aunt Peggy would want me to make sure he's okay' Sharon had to be carrying at first, only Nick Fury could possibly screw that setup up as hard as he did by assigning her to watch over Steve while undercover so nothing could ever happen between them due to it starting out on a basis of lies. It's the same sort of 'can you just think like a fucking normal person for once in your life?' that was behind the absurdity of Steve's original wakeup from the ice in the first place. Because while I still headcanon that Fury intended for something to happen there, he did the exact wrongest thing to actually try and make it happen. *g*

Oh well, she's missing her window in this timeline due to Courtney (not that canon also wasn't cruel to her in that regard) but at least I can still be nice to her in other ways. NGL, this one was largely an excuse to get that one camera moment of Sharon weeping with happiness in the first place. Sometimes when I'm writing fanfic, I like to imagine I'm a movie director. *g*

And we close out on a glimpse of our HYDRA villains being HYDRA, and Pierce using his brief screentime to prove that he's far smarter than Shroud will ever be. Because he is one of my very favorite MCU villains, as is Rumlow, and even if they're both headed for their fates in the events of TWS I can pay some respect first.

There will be one more chapter after that, and a post-credits stinger, and then our tale is done.

cliffc999 · 2026-01-12T05:38:12+0000

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Minus Zero

"Fire now." Captain America's voice came hoarsely through the headset.

"Steve! No!" Courtney cried into her microphone. Next to her, Sam Wilson placed a steadying hand on her shoulder.

"Do it!" Cap ordered. "Do it now!"

"Firing." Maria Hill acknowledged regretfully from her station in Flight Ops Control.

The three Insight Helicarriers each locked in on the other two with their main railguns and went to continuous rapid fire. The reinforced hulls on the three ultra-sophisticated engines of death had been built to withstand almost anything, but against their own orbital artillery at point blank range their armor was as much use as balsa wood versus a bullet. With great gouts of flame spurting from every seam the hovering vessels groaned, shuddered, and began to helplessly descend towards the ground. The comms cut out with a horrible flare of static.

"What a waste." Secretary Pierce whispered sadly, as he stood watching the destruction of Project Insight through the paranoramic windows of the conference room adjacent to his office. Scattered around his feet were the unconscious bodies of the HYDRA soldiers that the infiltrating Black Widow and Invisigal had subdued to rescue the World Security Council, and behind him stood Nick Fury with a levelled pistol.

"You're goddamn right it is." Invisigal spat hatefully at the arch-traitor and leader of HYDRA. "But we're really not talking about the same thing."

"Time to go, Mister Secretary." Natasha commanded him with a voice of ice as she stepped up to take his arm. "You're flying out with us."

"To be the guest of honor at the trial of the century?" Pierce smiled down at her slightly, his dignitas still wrapped around him like an invisible shield. "Thank you for the offer, but I'm afraid I must decline." And suddenly his face drew up tightly in a grimace, his left arm clutched tightly to his side, and he collapsed to the ground.

"Damn it!" Sam swore, running over to the fallen man and swiftly examining him. "Did he have a heart condition?"

"Yes." Nick answered him tonelessly. "He had a pacemaker put in five years ago."

"Well it must have had a manual override." Sam said grimly as he finished taking Pierce's pulse. "He just put his own heart into ventricular fibrillation. There's nothing I can do for him."

Pierce smiled thinly up at the surrounding heroes. "Hail… Hydra…" he silently mouthed, and died.

Fury exhaled heavily as he turned to face the stunned World Security Council members who'd silently been watching the entire tableau. "This whole place is about to come down. The escape elevator is in the Secretary's office, use it and get the hell to the basement shelter and then out the evac tunnel. We'll fly out."

"Are you staying dead, Nicholas?" Councilor Singh asked him. "Or can we report having seen you here?"

"Stay quiet for now, if you would." Fury acknowledged the gesture. "Officially Hill and Rogers had command of this op. We thought HYDRA was gone once before and obviously we were wrong. Might be useful for us to keep a hole card out this time."

"I understand. Thank you for saving us." the Councilor nodded back to Fury and his team. "All of us… from the consequences of our own mistake." He looked back out the window at the falling Helicarriers and then led his fellow Councilors into Pierce's office nearby.

"Let's go." Natasha said, and the four of them trotted back out to the helipad and the sleek black machine waiting for them there. Fury took the controls and Natasha the copilot's seat, and they lifted off into the air.

Courtney stared out the side window, white-faced, at the nearest of the three crashing Helicarriers – the one that Captain America was still on, facing off against the Winter Soldier. The helicopter lifted off just in time to avoid being caught as the edge of the Helicarrier's flight deck brushed against the side of the Triskelion and the skyscraper began to shudder and collapse. Undeterred, the Helicarrier continued its slow, tragic descent over the Potomac.

"Can we land on it? Get him off before it crashes?" Courtney begged.

"No." Sam shook his head, "Its descent is too erratic and half the flight deck is on fire. Plus he's on the bottom of the damned thing, in the targeting blister."

"Steve can do a five-thousand-foot fall into water without a parachute and swim it off." Natasha insisted. "All he has to do is get out while it's still over the river and he'll be fine."

"Then why hasn't he?!?" Courtney fretted.

Steve's voice came back into their headsets, full of static, as Natasha managed to partially restore radio contact.

"Your name… is James Buchanan Barnes…" Steve's voice came painedly over the headset, followed by the thunderous clang of a metal arm punching against a vibranium shield..

"Is that idiot still trying to talk him down?" Sam swore viciously.

"I'm not gonna fight you. You're my friend." Steve continued, as a grunt of rage and another furious punch was heard faintly in the background.

The sounds of combat continued, as the Winter Soldier furiously pressed the attacks. Steve grunted in pain several times, but appeared to be successfully blocking or dodging most of his opponent's blows.

"But I'm not just gonna lie down and let you kill me either. I can't do that." Steve continued, as Courtney sniffled.

"Shut up!" the Soldier's voice came faintly through the microphone as he continued attacking.

"I met a girl, you see." Steve explained. "She's wonderful. Feisty on the outside, sweet on the inside… everything you'd ever hoped I'd find…"

"I don't CARE!" the Soldier shouted.

"I can't wait to introduce you to her." Steve said. "You'll get along great, I know you will. But you gotta come with me, Buck. Just stop fighting and let me get us out of here."

"You… don't know me!" the Soldier swore hoarsely. "You're! My! Mission!"

"We're running out of time, Buck." Steve pleaded. "Her name's Courtney. I can't abandon her. But I can't abandon you either. Please don't make me choose between you two… because I don't know how I can."

Several more frantic clangs of the shield sounded as the Soldier's voice faded away to incoherent grunts of pain.

"'Cause she's the woman I love, and you're my brother. And I want us all to be together… till the end of the line."

Silence fell for one awful moment before the armored-glass viewing blister on the bottom of the Helicarrier was smashed open by a huge chunk of debris falling through it from the inside. The radio cut out again with a horrible finality, and Courtney sobbed.

"I see him! One o'clock!" Sam suddenly pointed between the pilots' seats and out the windscreen, where two barely visible man-sized silhouettes were falling towards the Potomac from the torn-open blister. One of them had a glint of metal coming from their arm, and the other was clearly dressed in a bright red, white, and blue costume.

"I'm going after him!" Fury put the helicopter into a steep dive, and Sam fought his way back into the helicopter's passenger compartment and over to the side door as they levelled out.

"Keep a tight hold on that strap!" he ordered Courtney, and then furiously pulled on the door handle and slid it back. "Right door open!" he called out, and then immediately began hyperventilating, charging himself with oxygen.

"Going into a hover… now!" Natasha called back from the pilot's compartment, and the helicopter came to a standstill barely six feet over the river.

"Diver in the water!" Sam acknowledged as he leapt out the door, followed almost immediately by Courtney. The two of them arced down into the depths of the Potomac where Cap had just fallen and swam down towards the struggling figure in the flag costume. Off to their side, just at the edge of visibility, another swimmer saw them coming and turned away.

The two divers each grabbed on to one side of the struggling Cap and managed to, with some assistance from their rescue, use their combined muscle power to haul him back up to the surface.

"Ugh, I still can't believe how heavy he is!" Courtney complained as everybody's head broke the water.

"He had a big breakfast." Sam snarked as the three of them dog-paddled towards the nearest shore. "And what the hell were you thinking, jumping in after me? I'm the one with pararescue training and you're not even a lifeguard! I could have ended up having to try and rescue two drowning people!" he insisted.

"And I'm the one with the bionic lungs, remember?" Courtney called back heatedly. "Maybe I would have ended up having to save you from drowning!"

"It's nice to see… you're all getting along… so well." Cap joked weakly as they helped the battered and bleeding hero up onto the muddy shore.

"Jesus, man, you've got at least three bullet holes in you!" Sam swore as he examined the wounded Cap. "Did you ever consider ducking?"

"And I thought you had a problem with getting stabbed!" Courtney lovingly fussed over Steve, before a motion out of the corner of her eye made her look up. "Guys!" Courtney called out alarmedly. Both men turned and then tensed at the sight of the cyborg assassin standing maybe fifty feet away from them down the riverbank, also bedraggled and soaking from where he'd just swam up out of the river.

"Bucky?" Steve asked plaintively. "Are you okay?"

"… Steve." Bucky nodded slowly back at him, as the other two gasped. "I… don't know." he continued faintly. "I know you… but I don't know how I know you."

"HYDRA messed with your head. Took away your memories." Steve pleaded. "Come with us. We can help you."

"It's not safe here." Bucky shook his head as he stepped away. "I have to go."

"We won't force you to do anything." Courtney interrupted Steve. "But please come back when you can, Bucky. Steve misses you so much."

"You're his girl?" Bucky looked at her curiously.

"Yes." Courtney smiled tearfully. "I'm Courtney. It's nice to meet you."

Bucky fought for words that he couldn't find and then nodded somberly to her. He turned swiftly and disappeared into the nearby underbrush.

"I'll be goddamned, you were right." Sam stared after him wonderingly. "He was still in there, even if he's still pretty messed up."

"Told you so." Steve grunted, and then leaned back painedly and gasped.

"Yeah, now lie still." Sam turned back to Steve and then looked up again as the helicopter landed nearby. "He's stable for right now, but he's not going much further without medical attention!" Sam called out.

"Hill's staying at what's left of the Triskelion to coordinate search-and-rescue!" Fury yelled down to them from the pilot's seat. "We already contacted her, she's finding someone to swipe a vehicle and give you a medevac. Natasha, stay with them. I've got to get out of here before someone else comes along to notice I'm still alive. Besides, the chopper can't lift all of us."

"I'm on it." Natasha acknowledged as she jumped down out of the helicopter with the first-aid kit. "Here, let's at least get some dressings on him."

"Yeah." Sam said as Fury nodded good-bye to everyone and took off again. The three of them finished giving Steve what first aid they could and then started helping him stagger up the embankment toward the nearby frontage road.

"Van coming." Sam said warily as a nondescript service utility van with no insignia made an appearance after several minutes. Its headlights flashed at them once, then thrice.

"It's okay, I know the driver." Natasha said, and unhesitatingly led the others towards the van. The vehicle came to a stop and the driver, an athletic young blonde woman with a bloody bandage tied around one arm, leapt out.

"How bad is it?" she greeted them worriedly.

"Bad enough I'm thinking hospital rather than safe house, but not bad enough we need to run all the red lights." Sam answered her.

"This is Sam and she's Courtney." Natasha introduced them. "Sam's the medic, so right now we follow his lead."

"Straight to the nearest ER, got it." the blonde agent acknowledged. "Okay, I swiped a trauma kit if you need more supplies, it's in the back of the van. Now everybody load up, we need to get out of here before half the alphabet agencies in Washington start setting up a containment perimeter and then let people leave only in the back of a detention vehicle."

Sam and Natasha helped the wounded Steve into the back compartment and got to work on him with the trauma kit, leaving Courtney sitting nervously in the passenger seat. After spending several blocks driving quickly yet cautiously to escape the immediate perimeter, the agent relaxed enough to turn and speak to her passenger.

"So you're the one." she greeted Courtney. "The girl from another universe."

Courtney looked knowingly back at the woman questioning her. "Did you know Steve well?" she asked with just a touch of frost.

"We met at work a few times, but no, we weren't close." she acknowledged Courtney respectfully. "I was originally supposed to be heading up a new special security detail for him, but that got changed after his wormhole trip. As is, we were just office acquaintances."

"I'm imagining Steve was a very popular sight around the building." Courtney replied suspiciously.

"Oh he was." the woman acknowledged. "But I wasn't kidding myself that I had any… claim on part of his life." She trailed off embarrassedly. "Sorry, I'm trying not to make this awkward but in my case I literally grew up on stories of him from when I was a little girl, so it was never not going to be awkward actually meeting him at SHIELD. Or meeting anyone else who was close to him."

"Do most little girls in this world grow up on Captain America fairy tales?" Courtney inquired tentatively.

The agent actually chuckled at that. "Do you know what the difference between a fairy tale and a war story is?"

"One of them starts out with 'Once upon a time' and the other one starts out with 'Now this is no shit.'" Sam called amusedly from the back compartment.

"Exactly." the young woman smiled. "And in my case I got all the war stories direct from the source, my Aunt Peggy."

"Peggy-?" Courtney blinked, before her voice took on a knowing tone. "Ohhhhh. You're an Agent Carter."

"Guilty." she nodded back to Courtney. "So I was really just… hoping that you were a nice person." She looked out the windshield pensively. "Aunt Peggy said that Captain Rogers was always the one looking after everyone else, but that he made it almost impossible to properly look after him." The van came to a halt at a red light and she turned to look at Courtney imploringly. "So I know it's not my place to talk but please take good care of him, all right? Because he'll never do enough of that for himself."

"I'm not that bad." Came a weak protest from in back.

"Yes you are." Sam and Natasha both replied immediately.

Courtney relaxed and smiled warmly at the woman alongside her. "I will. I promise. And my friends call me Courtney."

"I'm Sharon." she replied, and they shook hands – and then Sharon winced as she put exertion on her wounded arm.

"I'm sorry!" Courtney drew her hand back. "Sam, you need to look at Sharon's arm once you've got a moment."

"I'm fine, it's just a knife slash." Sharon protested ."Superficial, barely broke the skin."

"What happened?" Courtney asked her.

"I was in Launch Control trying to stop the Helicarriers from even getting out of the bay." Sharon sighed. "It was a standoff in there between me and a few other loyalists and several of the STRIKE goons. Rumlow had his pistol to the head of one of the techs, but I had the drop on Rumlow … or I thought I did, at any rate. As soon as I blinked he pulled a sleight-of-hand trick with his holdout knife and suddenly I don't have a pistol anymore and he's using my weapon to shoot up the room. And then he made it to the launch panel and hit the controls despite everything I could throw at him." She slumped dejectedly. "I'm sorry I screwed it all up. If I'd done my job right then Captain Rogers wouldn't have needed to get himself shot up there at all."

"How long did you delay the launch?" Natasha asked matter-of-factly.

"Maybe sixty seconds, ninety at the outside." Sharon shook her head. "Barely any time at all."

"Sixty seconds was the difference between me and Sam getting onto the Helicarriers in the first place and them already being well into the air before we'd even made it back outside the building." Steve assured her. "What you did was as much part of saving everybody's lives as what we did. You did good, Sharon. Peggy would be proud of you."

Sharon blushed to the tips of her hair and furiously concentrated on the drive ahead, unable to answer. "We're almost at the hospital. What story am I telling?" she eventually asked.

"Drop me off a block away." Natasha ordered. "Sam, Courtney, you're just passers-by who found Steve at the side of the river. Sharon, you swiped the van from the Triskelion motor pool on your own initiative and went looking for crash survivors along the shore. I was never here."

"Got it." Sharon acknowledged, and stopped the van to let Natasha get out and disappear before resuming motion. "All right, we'll be at the ER in a couple of minutes. Everybody clear on what to say?"

"Natasha made it kinda easy to follow, yeah." Steve acknowledged with a grunt.

Sam forced Steve to lie down again, and Courtney turned to Sharon. "Are you going to vanish too once we get there?" she asked.

"I'm sure Natasha will be back in touch soon, she just doesn't want to get pinned down anywhere until she's had a chance to scope out the immediate reactions to the event and set up some fallback positions." Sharon assured her. "As for me, I might not have a job anymore but I still have friends to take care of… several of whom are riding in this van right now. So I'll stick with you guys at least until she turns up again to help brainstorm next moves."

"Glad to hear it." Courtney said. "Because honestly, I'm kinda out of my depth with all these spy games. I just drove down overnight from New York once the whole 'Captain America Fugitive' thing went public, and even then I couldn't actually find anyone until the whole mess on the causeway gave me a breaking news spot to go follow."

"If you're someone that Romanov and Hill would take along for the Triskelion raid at all, then you were not out of your depth." Sharon assured her. "Everything else, you can learn."

"Thanks." Courtney said. "I just hope I can keep up."

Sharon's expression turned from approving to sly. "And speaking of 'keeping up'…" she whispered to Courtney. "On behalf of all 'red-blooded American womanhood'…" she sardonically imitated the radio announcer from the old "Captain America Adventure Hour" show. "Well done."

* * * * *

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Plus 2

"Sorry I wasn't there when you needed me. They had me decoyed all the way out to the middle of Azerbaijan and then cut off my extraction." Clint swore vehemently as he entered the conference room in Stark Tower.

"Thor and Banner haven't even made it back yet." Steve replied. "We did miss having you there, but it's not your fault. HYDRA did their best to make sure everybody was as far out of position on Insight Day as they could arrange."

"Steve and I were lucky that even we were in town at the critical moment." Natasha reassured him.

"What's going on, Cap?" Tony asked as he arrived. "I thought the big team meeting wasn't until tomorrow, when the others finally get here."

"There's something that I needed to bring up with you first." Cap said gravely. "And I'm not going to lie, I was really tempted to not bring it up at all. But Courtney convinced me that under these circumstances keeping it secret would only be selfish… and stupid."

"Really not the most reassuring opener." Tony said heavily as he sat down. "What's worse than finding out that the most powerful and influential security agency in the world was actually secretly run by Nazis and you had to burn it to the ground and upload all its secrets to the Internet to stop their secret plan to kill me, you, and millions of other people at the last minute?"

"There's no way to sugar-coat it." Steve sighed heavily. "But as near as we can figure, your parents' deaths weren't an accident. HYDRA had them assassinated."

Tony's expression immediately went blank, then red with rage. "You're sure?" he asked with dangerous mildness.

"The computer-Zola basically bragged as much to our faces in that bunker in New Jersey." Natasha said quietly. "We just finished digging through the SHIELD datadump looking for confirmation. There's no direct references, just a lot of separate data points to be correlated, but we're confident in our analysis."

"Why would they even do that?" Tony shook his head, dumbfounded. "Dad- dad made weapons. HYDRA loved weapons. He was alive and producing for SHIELD, which means he was producing for them."

"You told me once that he went from being pretty relaxed when you were a little kid to paranoid and suspicious later on." Steve said. "And he died when you were in college. We think he was starting to suspect something was rotten at SHIELD, that's why he closed himself off and started encrypting everything. Even his arc reactor research and the synthetic vibranium formula."

"And when they caught on that he was starting to catch on-" Tony said jerkily, as his hands twitched and fidgeted. "Okay, that fits. But your aunt didn't stop being SHIELD Director until a few years after Dad was killed." He turned to where Sharon was sitting silently at the foot of the table next to a pile of analyses. "How come she didn't catch on?"

"The same reason Fury didn't, until almost the very last moment." Sam answered for her. "Running an agency as large as SHIELD is like being a four-star general. Your job eats up basically all your waking hours. Howard Stark was a highly intelligent man who not only would have had access to everything but also have the relative leisure time to stop and lengthily ponder things he'd seen in hindsight instead of always having to be in crisis management mode. It's almost certain he'd spot it first."

"Yeah, okay." Tony nodded. "I get that. But this entire conversation doesn't make sense. HYDRA killed my parents, but by itself that's not something you'd want to keep secret from me. I was already all-in on the 'help finish the job' parade regarding our remnant Nazi problem, that's why we were getting the band back together in the first place. This would just be more motivation for me… so what's the part you didn't want to tell me?"

"We don't know who at HYDRA ordered the assassination." Steve said reluctantly. "It almost certainly wasn't Pierce, he wasn't senior enough then. But we do know who actually carried it out." Steve sighed and continued. "HYDRA sent their very best assassin on that job, no one less."

Tony's hand slammed down on the table. "Your old war buddy." He spat. "You really would have hidden him from me?"

"Tony, he was brainwashed." Natasha said. "He's not the one you need to go after."

"Brainwashed, shmainwashed-" Tony began furiously, only to be cut off by a furious "HEY!" from Clint.

"You remember that time you almost went face-first through the original Helicarrier's engine?" Clint continued. "Remind me again exactly how that happened?" He tapped his own finger against his temple twice. "Loki got in my head with the Mind Gem and made me almost kill you and everybody else in this room except for Sharon, Courtney, and Sam. And I did kill at least a dozen other SHIELD agents that day-" He winced and continued. "Anybody who said back then that it was my fault and I should hang for it, they get to stand up now and say Barnes should eat the guilt for what HYDRA forced him to do. But anybody who didn't say that back then is just trying to have it both ways."

"Tony." Courtney pleaded. "I heard the Winter Soldier try to kill Cap repeatedly… and I saw Bucky Barnes stop trying. That day by the river, he wasn't under their control anymore. He'd broken free. But that means he had something to break free from."

"And as a more practical concern." Sharon began diffidently. "We just got through saying that we don't know who ordered your parents' deaths. Which means that to the best of our knowledge, there's currently only one living person who might know."

"The guy they originally ordered to do it." Tony followed along. "Just- just give me a minute, okay?" he stammered out. "Let me work through this." He got up and started to pace furiously.

"You don't have to help me find him." Steve offered after a long moment. "I'm not asking you to do anything you don't want to do. I'm just asking… please don't hurt him."

"You-" Tony shook his head. "Okay, at least you came to me up front. If you'd kept this behind my back then I really would never have forgiven you. But as for the rest-" Tony stopped in shock and then slumped back into his chair. "You were talking about Loki, and I just realized something." He stopped and swallowed heavily, and then continued. "The day the Chitauri came, you remember that I flew back to the Tower ahead of you guys. Loki was already waiting for me in the penthouse when I got there. I had to stall him and keep him monologueing while I changed suits."

"I remember." Steve said. "What about it?"

"I skipped over the part where he tried using the Glowstick of Destiny on me, to send me out as his mind-controlled killbot against you." Tony said. "I mean, why bring it up? He tried his zappy thing with the Mind Gem, it didn't work, we had a ton of other shit on our plate that day anyway, so didn't occur to me to make a thing out of it afterwards. But only just now did I finally figure that if I hadn't lucked out massively-" He tapped his own chest. "If the Arc Reactor I had in my chest then hadn't somehow shorted out the Mind Gem then I really would have been turned into Loki's techno-zombie. And I'd have come out trying to murder you just as hard as Legolas here did."

He traded a grave look with the archer. "Only I wouldn't have been shooting at you with just a bow and arrow. If I'd been mind-controlled and wearing the Mark VII then I could have torn through all of you except Thor and Banner without breaking stride, and they'd never have been able to snap me out of it without disabling the suit entirely." He sighed. "Which means, of course, that I wouldn't have been available to get the nuke through the portal when they shot it at us and all of Manhattan would be gone. And if that wasn't bad enough, in hindsight we now know that us all dying there would also have meant that HYDRA would have inherited the Earth just a few days ago." Tony blinked. "Which come to think of it finally answers the question about who in SHIELD would even want to shoot a nuke at us that day and why, because Fury certainly didn't."

"If the nuke had detonated on us that would indeed have happened." Natasha agreed ruefully. "And yes, in hindsight that nuclear launch order was almost certainly Pierce's helpful 'suggestion' to the Council."

"So yeah. Mind control. It's really bad shit." Tony nodded. "Maybe I didn't use to take it as seriously as I should have, but I'll definitely have to keep a better eye out in the future." He looked at Clint and then Steve. "And maybe I should make more allowances for the people who weren't as lucky as I was."

"Thank you, Tony." Steve gasped in relief. "Bucky's in the wind right now, and just on my own hook I'd be lucky if I could find him in anything under months, if not years. But with you and JARVIS added to the equation-"

"Yeah, yeah. Sooner begun, sooner done, sooner we're finding what's left of HYDRA and busting all their asses." Tony agreed resolutely. "So when do we start?"

* * * * *

Author's Note: And so our tale ends, not with a full rewrite of the MCU but with a close-out on the climactic events of TWS and then enough foreshadowing so that it's plain how Courtney's presence will change canon as the butterflies have flapped their pretty little wings. Because you just saw the moment at which they dodged the bullet for Civil War, and we're almost certainly not even on track to Ultron because Tony has in hindsight learned a newer respect for the Mind Gem, as well as learning to actually talk more with his friends. Because yeah, if Tony hadn't lucked out massively against Loki in Avengers 1, everybody would have died right then and there. Only took him two years to finally clue in, but hey, canon Tony never clued in at all so he's still ahead of the curve there.

Courtney's role in TWS was largely as already stated – she didn't even come down from NYC until after shit broke loose publicly, and still didn't catch up to the rest of the group until about the same time Maria did and only joined them for the final raid on the Triskelion. However, her contributions butterflied things just enough that Pierce was wrapped up before he could kill the Council and Rumlow was dealt with expeditiously enough that Sam could make it to the top floor to evacuate with the others. And, of course, her presence changed Steve's final confrontation with Bucky from the canon 'I'm willing to die here rather than abandon you' to 'I can't die here, I promised my best girl I'd come back to her', which of course butterflied things with Bucky as well.

As for Sharon's appearance – well, for one thing, she's just one of my favorite MCU characters and I think she really got done dirty in canon. But I also felt her presence in this fic to be necessary because I'm enough of a romantic that if I can work in a graceful passing of the torch, then that torch is going to be passed. And no, Sharon is not carrying that torch herself. Despite her whole hero-worship she was raised with thing, and her desire to help look out for Steve because it's what Aunt Peggy would want, and possibly a wee bit of a crush, her sole contact with Steve in this timeline has been meeting him several times at work in the weeks in-between his return and the events of TWS, plus the riverside medevac here.

But Peggy, who is the previous bearer of that torch, isn't really up to speaking for herself right now. She's still alive for Steve to take Courtney to visit her in the retirement home, but her Alzheimer's has progressed enough that there's no guarantees there. And if there's any person who has the right to speak on Peggy's behalf in this regard, it's Sharon. So as the proxy for her aunt, she gets to be here and give the 'Please take good care of him' speech that the graceful ex is privileged to give to the current incumbent.

Canonically, the short period of time the loyal agents helped delay things in Launch Control did make all the difference. And everybody credits the computer tech with a gun to his head for his bravery there, and he earned it, but fewer people credit Sharon with her end of that achievement as well. So I did.

Just the post-credits stinger left, and we're done.

cliffc999 · 2026-01-12T05:39:08+0000

Earth-MCU
Insight Day: D Plus 110

Courtney took a deep breath and tried to calm her racing pulse. She'd faced down sadistic supervillains, Agent Rumlow and an entire building full of HYDRA killers, Shroud's giant spider mech, and her own imminent death by suffocation, but right at the moment she couldn't recall being this terrified of anything in her entire life. And worse of all, this was a challenge that none of the Avengers could help her confront – not Steve, not Tony, not Natasha, not anyone. Even those of her friends who with her at this moment, as opposed to nervously waiting back home to see how it shook out, could still do nothing except support her from the sidelines-

"Even if you've got bionic lungs, don't forget to breathe." Sharon urged her gently. "And whatever you do, don't go invisible on camera." she teased.

"Hey, it wouldn't be anything that they already haven't seen before." Courtney teased back weakly. One of the makeup people tsked slightly and leaned in to briefly touch up Courtney's face, then stepped back.

"Miss Doe? You're in one." One of the production assistants nodded to her, and she stepped slightly closer to the edge of the curtain at stage left.

"Short answers. Speak in complete thoughts, because they'll chop it up into sound bites. Pause before speaking." Pepper coached her. "And don't panic, you've got this."

"Welcome back, everyone." The host began as the show cut in from commercial. "For our first segment, NewsWatch At Night is proud to bring you the first one-on-one exclusive interview with the luckiest woman in America, the lady that has been memed all across the Internet as 'the Star-Spangled Girlfriend'. Everyone, please welcome Courtney Jane Doe!"

Girding her loins as intently as if she were stepping out into an artillery barrage, Courtney strode forward into the spotlight and turned to smile nervously at the wildly applauding crowd. She took her seat at one end of the interview couch and after a nod at the camera turned to face her interviewer.

"Thank you for having me on, Janet." Courtney nodded to the host.

"Courtney, we're all already familiar with the outline of your life and how you arrived here, and of course with the fact that you are the latest member of the Avengers. But there are still so many questions I want to ask right now." Janet smiled disarmingly. "Unfortunately, we only have so much time, so I'll start with the one that everybody's been wondering at ever since the very first public announcement about you. Is that really your name, or was SHIELD just too rushed towards the end to actually be creative with aliases?"

"It is genuinely my name." Courtney answered, only remembering to cut off from making a lengthier explanation at the last minute.

"How did you get such a name? Were you an orphan?" Janet asked compassionately.

Courtney kept her expression even only with effort. "I was abandoned by my parents."

"I'm very sorry to hear that." Janet answered after a brief pause. "So, on to a more pleasant topic. Is there a name change coming in the near future?" she asked with a knowing grin.

"Steve and I are very close, but nothing is scheduled right now." Courtney eventually decided on her exact wording. "The Avengers have a lot on their plate at the moment dealing with the fallout of HYDRA's public reveal and the dismantling of SHIELD, and likely will for some time."

"You were there on Insight Day, weren't you?" Janet pressed. "Fighting alongside the Captain?"

"I was there, but not alongside him." Courtney answered. "My job was helping back up Natasha inside the Triskelion."

"The surviving World Security Council members have already credited your last-minute intervention with being the decisive factor that kept Secretary Pierce from being able to kill them." Janet acknowledged. "Quite an introduction to superheroing that you've had!"

"I had already been a superhero back on my birthworld for almost six months prior to arriving here, but that was my debut on this Earth, yes." Courtney agreed.

"Can you really turn invisible?" Janet asked eagerly.

Courtney cast an apologetic smile to stage left towards where Sharon was standing behind the curtain and obligingly vanished for the camera for five seconds.

"Incredible." Janet breathed before turning to address the camera. "And no, folks, that wasn't CGI, as our live studio audience can confirm!" The aforementioned audience broke out in gentle laughter. "So, you've only had your powers for around a year?"

"I've had them since I was fourteen." Courtney corrected. "I only started using them for superheroing about year ago."

"You waited that long to start? What were you doing with them in the meanwhile?" Janet asked curiously.

Courtney paused for several heartbeats before her head came back up and looked firmly into Janet's eyes. "I'd been a supervillain."

Backstage, Pepper groaned and facepalmed. Sharon sighed sympathetically and shrugged at the older woman.

The studio audience did a collective gasp, and for the first time in years the experienced anchorwoman did a visible double-take on live broadcast. "… excuse me?"

"I had been a criminal." Courtney admitted openly. "I used my powers to break into places and steal things." She looked briefly downcast. "I'm very ashamed of that period in my life, but I won't pretend that it didn't happen."

"That sounds like a tremendously longer story just begging to be told." Janet recovered. "Why did you stop?"

"… in my experience, there's two kinds of people who can make a career out of hurting others." Courtney eventually answered. "The kind who are lying to themselves about how wrong what they're doing is, and the kind who know exactly what they're doing and just don't care. HYDRA was full of the second kind. I was the first kind. And eventually, I just ran out of lies that I could tell myself." She paused regretfully and continued. "I only wish it hadn't taken me so long."

"That… is a tremendously courageous thing to admit." Janet eventually found words. "And from what you just said, it was a realization you had come to several months before you first met him. Do you think your… capacity for redemption is what initially attracted Captain Rogers to you?"

"Steve and I have entirely had that conversation." Courtney's grin made a slight, involuntary appearance. "And his answer to my question was 'Pretty girl who can choke out a bad guy like nothing but who's got a good heart deep down… what can I say, I've got a type.'"

Janet laughed gently. "That very much sounds like something he'd say. So he knew about your past before you'd started a relationship?"

"I told him everything up front, even the things I'd never admitted to anyone else before." Courtney agreed. "And he-" Courtney blushed. "Genuine acceptance for who you are is truly the single most precious gift that anyone can give anyone else in a relationship. You opened this interview calling me perhaps the luckiest woman in America, and honestly? You're not wrong. Steve is the most remarkable person that I've ever met, and I still pinch myself sometimes to make sure I'm not dreaming."

"You are indeed the envy of a great many women around the world, some of whom are currently in this studio." Janet agreed eagerly. "Do you have any message for them?"

Courtney peered at Janet suspiciously, before turning to the camera. "I'm sorry that there's only one Captain America, and he's taken. But girls, there are more men out there who are genuinely decent people deep-down so don't give up on finding one for yourself. The looks, the muscles, the celebrity… that's all superficial. This is what matters." She tapped her own heart with several fingers and turned back to Janet. "Back where I'm from, Steve once got an offer from a much more famous superteam than the one I'd met him working at for a much more prestigious position, and he turned it down without hesitation. And when I asked him why he did that, he said that he'd never met anyone who'd been made happy just from having money and fame. And that a satisfying life came from having useful work to do, and having good people to share your life with and care for – and who'd also be there to care for you."

"That is a very positive and life-affirming message." Janet agreed. "Now, on to more superhero-y questions. There's some people who say that your role on the team is very redundant with Black Widow's and that you are only on the team as a favor to your boyfriend. What is your answer for them?"

"There is exactly one requirement for membership on the Avengers – the other team members have to agree that you're making a useful contribution and are the sort of person they could all trust with their lives." Courtney answered firmly. "And I will remind 'these people' out there that two out of the original six members had no superpowers at all." She took a breath and continued more mildly. "That having been said, Natasha can do a great many things that I can't do. And she actually welcomes my presence on the team because my being available for going all ambush predator on the bad guys frees up a lot of her time to go do those other things."

"You are indeed an exceptional hand-to-hand combatant, particularly for someone who hasn't had SHIELD or elite military training like the Black Widow, Hawkeye, or Captain America." Janet redirected. "Where did you learn?"

"Actually, I'm enhanced." Courtney admitted. "It turns out that invisibility isn't my only superpower – I also have a reaction time, hand-eye coordination, and physical strength incrementally above theoretical human maximum. It's nowhere near as significant a set of physical enhancements as what Steve has, of course, but it makes me a lot tougher to deal with in close-quarters than would be normally expected from a woman my size. Plus, even before I started going to the Natasha Romanov school of martial arts – and yes, Nat, you're a sadist and I will say that on live TV, so there! – I had years of practical experience and more conventional kickboxing training."

Backstage, Sharon managed to restrain herself from laughing loudly enough to be picked up on live microphone only with a visible effort.

"I notice that you keep saying 'back where I'm from' or 'my birth world'." Janet asked after a pause for thought. "Why not 'homeworld'?"

"Home is where Steve is." Courtney answered immediately, and there was a subdued 'Awwwww.' from the audience.

"On another topic, I have a question regarding Stark Industries' recent groundbreaking announcement in the fields of medical implant technology and transplant anti-rejection measures. What exactly was your role in that, and why has Tony Stark assigned you the royalties from those new patents? Are you also a scientist in addition to your other accomplishments?"

"Hah, no." Courtney waved away the very idea. "And my role in it was to be the person who brought an example of the new technology from my birth world for Tony to reverse-engineer." She tapped her chest again. "One of the last things I did before ending my villain career was volunteer to be subject to an experiment in very unlicensed medicine by another supervillain." Her expression turned sad. "My asthma – yes, there's a reason the first Stark medical cybernetics implant announced was a lung implant – had been getting pretty bad, so I did something stupid and desperate. And it worked… and then the bad guy deliberately turned the implant off and tried to hold my own lungs hostage against me to force me to work for him." She shrugged. "Which anybody with the common sense of a gerbil should have seen coming in advance, but I didn't. So I walked out on him and on supervillaining altogether, and to skip to the very ending, the mad scientist is eventually brought to justice some months later – that was the first major case I worked in conjunction with Steve on, as it happens – and ends up facing multiple consecutive life sentences for his various crimes against humanity. And I end up emigrating to another world with a deactivated piece of highly experimental tech in my lungs that's basically nothing but dead weight… until Tony Stark takes one look at it and needs less than a week to figure out how to reactivate the implant. And not much time after that to reverse-engineer all the principles the tech is based on, and to do so safely and in a completely humane manner. Which is why we're looking forward to not only a whole lot of people not having to suffer the way I or Steve-"

"Excuse me, Captain Rogers had asthma?" Janet asked, shocked.

"He had a lot of illnesses in childhood, before the super-soldier serum fixed them all." Courtney corrected her. "I thought that was public record here."

"It was, but I hadn't known that asthma had been one of them." Janet acknowledged. "I'm sorry I interrupted, please go on."

"At any rate, hopefully the asthma cure will make it through FDA approval soon, and the advancements in material science that will bring in a whole new age of rejection-free implants and transplants are already most of the way through." Courtney finished proudly. "As to your question for why Tony assigned me the royalties instead of himself, he's taking the position that since all of the advancements in question are due to his examination of a piece of technology from an alternate world that I own and was the first to bring to this Earth, I should get the rights on the basis of salvage law and explorer's first discovery." She shrugged. "Which I'm not sure is how the law even works, but since the only other possible legal position is that the royalties are his and he's voluntarily signed them over to me anyway, moot point." She chuckled. "I actually asked him how he could give it up just like that, and he looked at me like I was an idiot and said 'Courtney, do you really think I need more money?'"

Janet laughed softly. "I certainly can't argue with that! And speaking of money, you are looking at a potential income of hundreds of millions of dollars when the technology in question starts hitting the market, which it's almost certainly going to do in the next year. And as I understand it, Mr. Stark has already paid you a very generous advance. Since by all accounts you arrived on our world with all of your worldly goods in a single duffel bag, how are you reacting to being part of such a wonderful rags-to-riches story?"

"I already mentioned the part where I'm regularly pinching myself." Courtney chuckled. "And while I will certainly keep enough to support myself and Steve comfortably, I intend to use the vast majority of the money to set up a new charitable endeavor."

"What type of charity would it be?" Janet asked interestedly.

"A foundation to try and make full-spectrum counseling, rehabilitation, and legal assistance services available for at-risk youth or ex-cons. Particularly enhanced people. We're still working out what safeguards to use to make sure we only get the sincere redemption cases and not people just interested in trying to take us for a ride, but…" She trailed off and continued more soberly. "I screwed up my own life repeatedly and for years, and in the end I still got a second chance anyway. And it was an outright miraculous chance, one that I could never have possibly expected. So if I'm going to have a lot of money coming in… well, I might not be able to guarantee miracles, but I can't think of a better use for that money than trying to help other people out there like I was get their second chance too."

"That is an absolutely wonderful thought, Courtney, and it says a great many good things about you as a person that this would be your first idea on how to use your new fame and fortune." Janet smiled at her. "Do you have a name in mind for your new charity?"

"The Phoenix Foundation." Courtney answered. "Because it symbolizes rebirth… and in honor of some old friends."

"Well, we all wish you the best of luck." Janet asked. "But we are just about out of time, so let me just leave you my best wishes for your new life and thank you for being on the show."

"You're welcome, Janet, and thank you for having me on." The two women shook hands and the red camera light winked out.

"And, cut!" the director called. "Okay, we'll be back from commercial in three so please clear the stage for the next guest. And somebody get Janet a glass of water!"

Courtney walked backstage to be greeted by an amused Sharon and an exasperated Pepper. "Why do I even bother writing media scripts for people if they don't stick to them?" the latter moaned. "You avoid being the worst person I know in that regard only by the existence of Tony!" Pepper broke out in a beaming smile. "That having been said, you were wonderful. You had them eating out of the palm of your hand, and you weren't even trying to."

"As they say in Hollywood, the most important thing is sincerity… and once you can fake that, you've got it made!" Sharon grinned.

"Look, you know Tony and I both have ADHD. So if you don't want our mouths to run on autopilot, don't put us on camera alone and for longer than a couple of minutes while we're already stressed!" Courtney retorted.

"Well, we had to get the solo interview done sometime." Pepper sighed. "Joint appearances with Steve are all well and good, but if you ever want to be taken seriously you have to speak for yourself."

"Which she just did, and very well indeed." Sharon defended Courtney as they walked through the backstage corridors towards the rear exit. "And- hold up." Sharon's expression turned serious and she touched her earpiece to activate her throat mike as Pepper and Courtney tensed. "Understood. Carter out." She turned her mike off and turned to them. "That was JARVIS. Avengers mission alert just got called, and Steve and Clint will be meeting us at the Tower garage."

Courtney looked down at the formalwear she'd appeared on TV in. "Well, I hope we can at least head up to the suite so I can get changed first! And what's the mission?"

"They didn't want to say on the air, so something sensitive." Sharon said briskly.

The ride back to Stark Tower from the studio took only several minutes, and an eager-looking Steve and Clint both greeted them.

"Whoa, you guys look pumped. What's going on?" Courtney said.

"We've got a location on Bucky." Steve beamed. "Eastern Europe, turned up on the surveillance grid while we were searching for a remnant HYDRA lab. Looks like he's searching for it too."

"Unless they've gotten back in his head again and he's actually coming from the lab." Courtney said worriedly.

"Well, that possibility among several others is why we're flying out right away." Clint agreed seriously. "Oh yeah, and one more thing. In the possibility that he has been reactivated or his memory's still enough of a mess, then Natasha's worried that her presence might be a trigger – remember, she was once a secondary target on one of the Winter Soldier's missions even prior to the whole Insight mess. So she's standing down on this one, and if she's not there then that means that in addition to us three as the primary operators we also need someone else for field intel support."

"Please do not be kidding me right now." Sharon gasped. "Please tell me you're serious."

"Suit up, Agent Carter. You're coming off the reserve bench for this one." Steve smiled at her, and all parties present politely ignored the quiet squeal of Yes! that slipped out in response.

"Welcome aboard!" Courtney congratulated Sharon warmly.

"Just make sure to not get stabbed this time, hrm?" Clint teased as the four of them headed up the Tower towards the Avengers ready room and the Quinjet hangar.

"Was that advice for her or for me?" Steve asked amusedly as the elevator doors opened, and everybody laughed.

* * * * *

Author's Note: I would like to thank poster @htgriffin for their comment about charity work giving me the inspiration for this. And now I can get some of Courtney's future foreshadowing into actual story content instead of just buried in a WoG post. As well as Sharon's future foreshadowing, as in this timeline she followed Maria Hill into Stark Industries as Avengers support staff instead of going to the CIA.

I am going with the theory proposed earlier in-thread that Courtney has physical enhancements, because her performance in several scenes of the game is explainable only either by her being above physical baselines or else having training comparable to a Red Room graduate's and we already know it's not that. But superpeople in 'Dispatch' do seem to commonly run a set of physical buffs in addition to their unique powers in more than a few cases, so it fits.

If you're wondering at how the interviewer is being so nice, the answer is of course 'Pepper not only picked the most sympathetic venue she could find, she personally came along to the studio to give her Intimidating CEO Glare at people and remind them that they only got this exclusive interview by agreeing to be nice about it.' And even then she still asked a couple rude questions.

Also, I finally was able to get Courtney's ADHD mouth back on screen after it stopped appearing after the fic's early chapters. Just assume it was there the whole time but not getting in the way of anything important. (Steve actually finds Courtney's rambling habit charming, in fact.)

And even if I'm not doing a sequel, I can at least wrap things up and show a little bit of how the adventure will be continuing in this newer and nicer timeline.

Thanks for reading!

My Star Spangled Invisi-Gal [MCU/Dispatch] (Complete)

My Star Spangled Invisi-Gal [MCU/Dispatch]

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.

Connoisseur.